Sustainability in the Trump Era: Corporate, Global, and Enforcement Perspectives

• Date: 01 July 2017

7-2017 NEWS & ANALYSIS 47 ELR 10561

D I A L O G U E

Sustainability in the Trump Era:

Corporate, Global, and

Enforcement Perspectives

Summary

To commemorate Earth Day, Paul Hastings LLP

hosted a panel discussion on April 18, 2017, featuring

three prominent attorneys with extensive and diverse

experience in environmental counseling and litiga-

tion. e panelists reected on the transition to the

Trump Administration, and what it might mean for

long-standing issues of federalism, globalization, pri-

vate environmental governance, and enforcement and

compliance. Below, we present a transcript of the dis-

cussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and

space considerations.

Tom Mounteer (moderator) is a Partner in the Environ-

mental and Energy Practice at Paul Hastings LLP.

John Cruden was the Assista nt Attorney General for the

Environment and Natural Resources Division at the U.S.

Department of Justice.

Charles Di Leva was Chief Counsel of the Environmental

and International Law Unit at the World Bank.

Martha Rees was Vice President and Assistant General

Counsel a nd Chief Environment Counsel at the DuPont

Company.

Tom Mounteer: I want to star t by saying there’s a new

sheri in town. Over the past few months, we’ve seen a

new administration start to implement its vision of what

environmental protection should look like. For my 30

years in environmental law, it’s probably the most abrupt

transition, policy-wise, I have ever witnessed. We make

incremental changes, but this seems like a wholesale repu-

diation of what went before.

Today, our focus is on the global, corporate, and enforce-

ment perspectives on what we might expect under this new

administration. Maybe we will unveil a deep-seated envi-

ronmentalism that might persist, that might mean that all

of these regulatory changes don’t disrupt things as much as

we might otherwise think.

Let me start with introductions. Representing the cor-

porate perspective is Martha Rees. Martha had a 42-year

career at DuPont. She started as a research engineer and

moved into the lega l department, where she had a variety

of assignments including as a commercial attorney repre-

senting the pharmaceutical and agricultural products busi-

ness, as a corporate and securities lawyer, and as a federal

lobbyist. For the last nine years of her DuPont career, she

served as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel.

Unlike that steady career path, Charles Di Leva has had

quite a dierent ca reer trajectory. In December, Chuck

ended a 25-year career at the World Bank. His last posi-

tion was as chief counsel for the Environmental and Inter-

national Law Unit. Before that, Chuck spent three years

in private practice in Washington, D.C.; a year with the

United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi; ve

years with the Depar tment of Environmental Management

in Rhode Island; and four years as a trial attorney with the

Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S.

Department of Justice (DOJ).

John Cruden was, until the transition, the nation’s lead-

ing environmental enforcement ocial, serving as the

assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural

Resources Division. John has had a long and distinguished

career in public service w ith the federal government. Prior

to ser ving as the assistant attorney general, he served for

20 years in the Division, rst as chief of t he Environmen-

tal Enforcement Section, then as a career deputy assistant

attorney general. John was the rst government lawyer

to ser ve as president of the D.C. Bar, as well as the rst

government attorney to be elected chairman of the Ameri-

can Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and

Resources. And I’d be remiss not to mention John’s presi-

dency at the Environmental Law Institute for a spell.

Federalism and Regulatory Burden

Tom Mounteer: I thought from the corporate perspective,

we might start talking about two dominant themes that

seem to be emerging. One being the philosophical disposi-

tion that environmental regulation should be done at the

state level rather than federal level. And the second theme,

that environmental regulations are unduly burdensome

and don’t bring about the benets that we intend them to

bring about.

So oddly enough, John, I’d like to start with you and

talk about this whole notion of cooperative federalism,

Copyright © 2017 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.