The Center for Urban Environmental Reform (CUER) is a Social Justice Initiative of the City University of New York School of Law. CUER was founded on the belief that environmental justice is a critical aspect of social justice and that communities are entitled to participate fully and meaningfully in environmental decisions that affect them. CUER will be a clearinghouse and focal point for the data, experts, and training needed to ensure a level playing field. The goal is to expand participation in public decision-making and to increase transparency and overall access to information to enhance both the legitimacy of environmental decision-making processes and the fairness of decisions reached.
CUER provides resources for community groups wanting to obtain full and meaningful participation in environmental decision-making. The Center also produces scholarly research to influence an ongoing theoretical discourse about urban environmental justice and participatory democracy; and then converts that research into policy tools useful to planners, policymakers, and advocates, including grassroots community groups. The Center will publicize ongoing environmental decision-making processes to ensure that communities know what is happening or is being considered, and will focus on developing training workshops, on-line tutorials, and sample documents to facilitate wider and more effective participation in those decision processes.
CUNY Law Professor Rebecca Bratspies is the director of CUER.
Rebecca Bratspies is the founding director of CUER, a Professor at CUNY School of Law, and an internationally recognized expert on environmental law who has written scores of articles, op-eds, and other publications. She serves as an appointed member of New York City’s Environmental Justice Advisory Panel, and of EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. She is a member-scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform, a core member of the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, and an editorial board member of the International Journal of Law in Context.
She is a past member of the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law, past President of the AALS Section on the Environment, and a former advisor to the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research. A former Luce Scholar and law clerk to Judge C. Arlen Beam, she holds degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania (J.D cum laude).
Past CUER Fellows
Sharon Abel
Sharon Abel has always been an advocate for protecting the environment; when she was only 11 years old, along with a few friends, she started an environmental group where they would clean up trash in their local neighborhood in Westchester County, NY. She continued her passion throughout her undergraduate days at SUNY Oneonta, where she was President of the Protect Your Environment club, and continued after graduation by working for Citizens Campaign for the Environment, an environmental advocacy organization. One of her favorite campaigns, amongst several, was preventing Shell Oil from building “Broadwater,” a liquified natural gas (LNG) facility, in the middle of Long Island Sound. Sharon’s other interests include cooking, arts and crafts, having fun outdoors, and playing the card game Chinazo.
Andy Jones
Andrew Sawtelle graduated from CUNY School of Law in 2014, where he was a CUER Fellow.
Ethan Middlebrooks
Ethan’s interest in the environment began at a young age in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, where he would romp about the creeks and woods and clean up garbage. Growing up in Birmingham, a former steel town and heart of the Civil Rights Movement, also exposed him to the social and environmental inequities that came with both industrial and urban development. Ethan attended college at Cornell University, where he became active with on and off-campus environmental and sustainability groups. Before starting CUNY Law, he moved to New York City and volunteered with Hudson Riverkeeper and NY Cares while working as a paralegal. He interned with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s Environmental Justice Unit. Ethan was interested in water quality and access, reclamation of damaged lands, and sustainable development both in the form of urban renewal and new building.
Andrew Sawtelle
Andrew Sawtelle graduated from CUNY School of Law in 2016, where he was a CUER Fellow.
Georgiana Tan
Georgiana became interested in environmental law and justice when she traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico as a delegate with the Inter-American Law Student Association recognizing water rights for indigenous peoples. She interned for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and attended international environmental law classes at Vermont Law School. As a law student, she wrote and presented on various topics such as deforestation, locally undesirable land uses, investment agreements on environmental governance, and the law of armed conflict.
Henry Tranes
Henry Tranes grew up in Goshen, New York, in the Hudson Valley, giving him an appreciation for the environment from an early age. He spent the 2012 summer interning with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation’s Office of Environmental Justice in Long Island City. He graduated from SUNY Albany cum laude, receiving a B.A. in Political Science while also minoring in Africana Studies. Both during college and since graduating, he worked for two New York State Senators and developed an interest in policy work at the local and state levels. As a law student, Henry became interested in the field of environmental law and environmental justice. To that end, he wrote on home rule as a tool for municipalities to ban hydrofracking.