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Attorney John Cruden, former senior leader on environmental and natural resource matters at the United States Department of Justice, talked about the evolution in environmental law at a lecture on September 19 at IU McKinney School of Law.

Cruden supervised some of the department’s most significant litigation and high-profile environmental cases, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Love Canal, and Bunker Hill litigation and personally negotiated the multi-billion dollar resolutions of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Volkswagen emissions scandal.

Now in private practice as principal at Beveridge & Diamond, Cruden spoke at the IU McKinney School of Law for a lecture, “Environmental Law in Transition: Moving Towards a New Paradigm,” sponsored by the Program in Environmental and Natural Resources.

Cruden opened his remarks by declaring that “environmental law is born of tragedy,” pointing to the historic 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland as an event that spurred the modern environmental movement. In fact, Cruden says, the river had caught fire many times before, but the 1969 blaze caught the attention of Congress, which established the Environmental Protection Agency the following year.

His thesis was that the early days of environmental law were based on the adoption and implementation of the major statutes passed during the 1970s—the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act—a “top down” approach.  The future paradigm, he argues, is that environmental protection will be more “bottom up,” with companies and municipalities leading the way by adopting their own environmental standards and principles.

Cruden’s lecture detailed several other events in the evolution of environmental law, and he challenged the audience. “Are we ready for the next Cuyahoga moment?”

Upcoming: Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard will speak at the next Program in Environmental and Natural Resources Law Lecture at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, November 19.

Ballard is the author of the book “Less Oil or More Caskets: The National Security argument for Moving Away from Oil,” published by IU Press in 2019. The book details the history of US troops in the Middle East the last 40-plus years and the impact the oil industry has had on our international politics. Ballard makes a call to action for Americans to change their ideas about transportation. By changing the fuel in our vehicles and embracing new technologies in transportation, he argues that within two decades our nation and the world could be on the path to freedom from the current dependence on oil-rich nations. This would preclude the United States from having to send troops overseas to protect the supply of oil for the entire world, saving both dollars and lives.

This is a free event, but registration is required.