Comparative and Global Environmental Law and Policy

Robert V. Percival is the Robert F. Stanton Professor of Law and the Director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Percival joined the Maryland faculty in 1987 after serving as senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. While in law school, he served as managing editor of the Stanford Law Review and was named the Nathan Abbott Scholar for graduating first in his class. Percival served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White. Percival also served as a special assistant to the first U.S. Secretary of Education.

Percival is internationally recognized as a leading scholar and teacher in environmental law. Since 1992 he has been the principal author of the country's most widely used casebook in environmental law, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science & Policy, now in its seventh edition (http://www.erlsp.com). He is the author of more than 100 publications that focus on environmental law, federalism, presidential powers, regulatory policy, and legal history. Percival has taught as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School in 2000 and 2009 and at Georgetown University Law Center in 2005 and 2011. He received the University System of Maryland Board of Regents' Faculty Award for Collaborative Teaching in 2005, and in 2007 he was named the University's Teacher of the Year. In 2014, Percival received the Senior Distinguished Education Award from the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law in recognition of his outstanding teaching and contributions to the field of environmental law (https://www.iucnael.org/en/academy-awards/environmental-law-education-awards/218-2014-environmental-law-education-awards).

He teaches Environmental Law, a Global Environmental Law Seminar, Constitutional Law, and Administrative Law. During the spring semester of 2008, Percival taught as a J. William Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. In 1994, he taught as a Fulbright scholar at Comenius University Law School in Slovakia. Percival is a highly popular guest lecturer who has given hundreds of guest lectures, paper presentations, and workshops in 29 countries on six continents. In 2009, he represented the U.S. Department of State on a lecture tour of China. He has delivered guest lectures at more than 40 U.S. academic institutions, at 27 Chinese universities, and before numerous professional associations and government agencies.

Percival has served as the Natural Resource Law Institute Distinguished Visitor at Lewis & Clark College of Law, as a visiting professor of law at the University of Chile where he helped establish South America's first environmental law clinic, and as a high-level visiting foreign expert at Shanghai Jiaotong University’s KoGuan Law School. He has taught summer courses at Shandong University, Vermont Law School, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Percival has played a leading role in conceptualizing the new field of global environmental law. He maintains a website and weekly blog on this subject, which appears at http://globalenvironmentallaw.blogspot.com.

Percival has led seven environmental law student field trips to China and two to the Middle East. He is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and one of the founding members of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. In 2009, he delivered Pace Law School's Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture, and in 2015, he delivered the Wallace Stegner Lecture at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. Percival has served on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute and as co-chair of the steering committee of the D.C. Bar's Section on Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resources Law. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Percival has served as the contributing editor for Environment and Natural Resources for the Federal Circuit Bar Journal, as a special master for the U.S. District Court of Maryland, and as a member of the state of Maryland's Environmental Restoration and Development Task Force.