This introductory course will focus on the variety of legal mechanisms that regulate the environment, with a principal focus on the major federal statutes such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Statutes will be studied in some detail but also as examples of different regulatory approaches, ranging from "command and control" regulation to "incentive based" and "information disclosure" strategies. We will also think strategically, from both the industry and environmentalist perspective, about how law may be an instrument of social change. We will explore the field from a number of perspectives - as a site of intense group conflict, as an example of how regulation can both fail and succeed to achieve its goals, as a locus for debates about federalism, and as an example of a technical and scientifically driven area of law.