Two third-year Drake Law School students had articles about environmental law accepted recently for publication in nationally esteemed law reviews.
Jess Phelps’ “Much Ado About Decoupling: Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Recent European Union Agricultural Reform” will be included in the fall 2006 issue of Harvard Environmental Law Review, to be published early next spring.
In his article, Phelps critically examines the potential environmental effects of the 2003 reform to Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy to alleviate environmental harms caused by prior European agricultural subsidy programs. The paper concludes by advocating a shift in focus toward rural development programs. Phelps is editor-in-chief of the Drake Law Review.
“I was really amazed to receive an offer from such a prestigious journal – especially as a student,” Phelps said. “I think this is more a reflection of the quality of Drake’s agricultural law and legal research and writing programs than of my ability as a writer.”
Tamara Mullen’s article about the harms caused by ocean trawling and possible legal solutions to the problem will be published by the University of Baltimore Journal of Environmental Law next spring. The article is titled “The Convention on Biological Diversity and High-Seas Bottom Trawling: The Means to an End.”
“It’s extremely exciting and reaffirms in my mind that I am receiving a first-rate legal education,” Mullen said.
Mullen, executive editor of the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, originally wrote the piece last spring for Natural Resources Law, a class taught by Jerry Anderson, the Richard M. and Anita Calkins distinguished professor of law.
“This is great news for the law school and further evidence of a superior writing program,” Anderson said. “Both of these students worked very hard to produce thoroughly researched, thoughtful papers, so I am glad they will now reach a much wider audience.”