Through examination of environmental common law and key federal environmental statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act, it exposes students to the major challenges to environmental law and the principal approaches to meeting those challenges, including litigation, command and control regulation, technology forcing, market incentives, and information disclosure requirements. With the addition of cross-cutting topics such as risk assessment and environmental federalism, it also gives students a grounding in how choices about regulatory standards and levels of regulatory authority are made.