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Professor Robin Kundis Craig’s new casebook, Environmental Law in Context: Cases and Materials (2005, Thomson/West), introduces students to six of the most important federal environmental and natural resource statutes, as well as to a rather unusual procedural component of environmental law, the environmental citizen suit. “In my experience, many students take an Environmental Law course thinking that they are going to ‘save the whales,’” Craig says in the introduction. “What they learn rather quickly is that, in order to save the whales, they’re going to have to cope with quite a few fairly complex federal statues first.”

Craig says the book has been five years in the making and it not only shows students how to analyze the various components of federal statutes, it also places those statutes within the larger context of other legal and non-legal considerations, including common law, administrative law, constitutional law, international law, politics, social justice, science and technology, public health, and economics. According to Professor Craig, “Federal environmental law is an excellent vehicle for exploring the complex world of congressional lawmaking, statutory interpretation, and the various threads of political and legal discussion within the United States.”

Professor Craig is noted expert on environmental law and in particular ocean policy. She is currently working on writing projects involving public injuries and environmental bioethics, as well as one on the international incorporation of marine protected area science into marine biodiversity law. She is also writing a book chapter on coastal water quality for the ABA's new book on ocean and coastal law; preparing an environmental constitutional law presentation for the ABA's Section on Environment, Energy, and Resource's annual Fall meeting in September; and writing an article and preparing a presentation on urban runoff and ocean ecosystem health for a symposium at the Chapman University School of Law in January 2006.

She is also continuing her work as Chair of the ABA's Marine Resources Committee and as that Committee's and the Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources’ representative to the Working Group on Ocean Policy. In addition, Craig was recently appointed as one of a nine-member Committee on the Mississippi River and the Clean Water Act by the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. The goal of the committee’s two-year assignment is to produce a report on how the Clean Water Act has actually affected the management and water quality of the Mississippi River Basin.