Blank Rome associate Melissa A. Scacchitti will serve as a panelist at the 2025 Villanova Environmental Law Journal Blank Rome LLP Symposium, being held on Friday, February 7, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. This year’s symposium topic is “New Developments in Environmental Litigation.”
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
Recent major court decisions at the federal and state levels will have important consequences for environmental litigation. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a spate of major administrative law decisions, including one that overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine. In July, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted environmental groups the right to intervene in litigation over the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and in that decision indicated support for the groups’ efforts to invoke the Commonwealth’s Environmental Rights Amendment. Environmental lawyers have been left scrambling to foresee how these and other recent cases will affect the field of environmental law moving forward.
The Symposium will examine two major areas of recent development in environmental litigation: (1) environmental enforcement in the context of recent Supreme Court administrative law precedent and (2) potential uses of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment to advance environmental justice in the Commonwealth. Panels will bring together experts from the academy, government, private practice, and nonprofit organizations to discuss how recent cases in these areas will change environmental litigation.
Melissa’s session, “Environmental Enforcement Under New Administrative Law Principles,” will take place from 9:45–10:45 a.m.
ABOUT THE SESSION
This panel will examine how recent major U.S. Supreme Court administrative law decisions such as Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned the Chevron doctrine, will affect environmental litigation and especially environmental enforcement.
Panelists:
- Moderator: Madison Lesgart, Symposium Editor, Villanova Environmental Law Journal
- Sommer Engels, Clinical Instructor, Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic, Harvard Law School
- Jeffrey McCoy, Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
- Melissa Scacchitti, Associate, Blank Rome LLP
- David Uhlmann, Former Assistant Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
To learn more, please visit the event webpage.
