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Professor Linda Malone will lecture on the emerging role of civil society in the global warming debate. Linda Malone, the Marshall-Wythe Foundation Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, will deliver the 2007-2008 St. George Tucker Lecture on Thursday, November 29 at 3:30 p.m. in Room 127 of the Law School. Entitled, “Think Globally, Act Locally: A Pivotal Transformation in the Global Warming Debate,” the talk is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception in the lobby of the Law School.

Malone, who is also Director of the Human Rights and National Security Law Program at the Law School, will focus her lecture on what she perceives as a critical transformation in environmental law—the shift in regulatory impetus from national policies to programs and initiatives which are more local in nature. “Enforcement of international environmental law is no longer within the exclusive authority of states,” says Malone. “In fact, civil society at all levels—including nongovernmental organizations, individual activists, and local governments—is playing a more influential and necessary role in enforcement than ever before.”

Nowhere is this movement clearer than in the global warming debate, and Malone observes that the “explosion of initiatives against global warming exemplifies this development, as civil society has taken over the movement from the control of ineffective national programs.” Her lecture will discuss why civil society has played such an influential role in addressing this particular issue, and will also explore what the effect and future directions of this role might be.

An expert on environmental law, international law, and human rights, Malone has authored or co-authored twelve books in her areas of specialty, including Defending the Environment: Civil Society Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law and Environmental Regulation of Land Use, which is the preeminent work on the intersection of environmental law and land use. Malone is a member of the American Law Institute, the Environmental Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the Review Board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review, and serves on the Board of Directors for the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the American Association of International Criminal Law. She has also served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and co-authored the report of legal experts for the Congressionally-created U.S. Ocean Commission in 2005.

Malone holds a B.A. from Vassar, a J.D. from Duke University, and an LL.M. from the University of Illinois. She was a delegate to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992, was co-counsel to Bosnia-Herzegovina in its genocide case against Serbia and Montenegro before the World Court, was co-counsel to Paraguay in its challenge to the death penalty in Paraguay v. Virginia, and was co-counsel for amicus in the Supreme Court in Padilla v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In 1998, she received the Fulbright/OSCE Regional Research Award for her work on women's and children's rights in Eastern Europe, and, in 2002, she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the State Department, and the International Research and Exchange Board in continuance of her work. In recognition of her contributions to women’s rights, she received the Millenium Award of the Virginia Women's Bar Association in 2000.

The St. George Tucker Lecture Series was established in 1996 to recognize the scholarly achievements of a senior member of the William & Mary law faculty each year. The series is made possible through the generosity of Law School alumni.

St. George Tucker was the second professor of law at William & Mary and a pioneer in legal education. He drafted a formal description of the requirements for a law degree at the College, which included an exacting schedule of qualifying examinations in history, government and related pre-law subjects. Tucker's course material was published as the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. For a generation, Tucker's volume was considered the leading authority on American law.

For more information, call 757-221-1840 or email lawcom@wm.edu.