Ann Powers

Professor Ann Powers is an emerita faculty member of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law’s Center for Global Environmental Legal Studies at Pace University. She assumed emerita status in 2014. She has taught a range of environmental courses, including the law of oceans and coasts, international environmental law, UN diplomacy, and water quality. Her scholarship includes articles on emerging ocean issues, water pollution trading programs, and other subjects.

Professor Powers has worked with various projects of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), including the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law and the Oceans, Coasts & Coral Reefs Specialist Group of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law. She served on the ABA’s Sustainable Development Task Force and as ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources’ (ABA SEER) Liaison to the IUCN Law Academy, and is the International Council of Environmental Law’s (ICEL) Representative to the UN.

She has served on many boards and panels, including the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law, the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute, the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic. In connection with her work and professional activities, she has testified on numerous occasions before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and state legislatures and commissions.

Until joining the faculty in 1995 Professor Powers was vice-president and general counsel of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a major regional non-profit environmental organization, where she supervised the Foundation’s legal work and its pollution control advocacy program. She also served as a senior trial attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, handling both civil and criminal cases, and as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Columbia.

Professor Powers is graduate of Indiana University and Georgetown University Law Center. She clerked for the Honorable Thomas A. Flannery, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia.

• BA, Indiana University
• JD, Georgetown University Law Center

Books

• INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL LAW: CASES AND MATERIALS ON WATER POLLUTION CONTROL (Environmental Law Inst. 2008) (with Jeffrey Miller and Nancy Long)

Chapters

• “Climate Change and Pollution: Addressing Intersecting Threats to Oceans, Coasts and Small Island Developing States,” in THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW (David Leary and Balakrishna Pisupati eds.) (United Nations University Press 2010)
• “Emerging Ocean Issues,” in OCEAN AND COASTAL LAW AND POLICY (Donald C. Bauer et al. eds.) (American Bar Association 2008) (with Odin Smith)
• “Protecting Our Waters and Watersheds: The United States’ Experience,” in Direito, Àgua E Vida: Law, Water and the Web of Life, 41 (Antonio Herman Benjamin ed., 2003)
• “Law and Pollution,” in REVISTA: DA ESCOLA DA MAGISTRATURA DO ESTADO DE RONDONIA,197 (2002) (publication of the Judicial Center of the State of Rondônia, Brazil)

Law Review Articles

• The Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Pollution and Activities: Gauging the Tides of Global & Regional Governance, 23 Int’l J. Marine & Coast. L. 423 (2008) (with David VanderZwaag)
• The Connecticut Nitrogen Exchange Program, 14 Penn St. Envtl. L. Rev. 195 (2006)
• The Current Controversy Regarding TMDLs: Contemporary Perspectives "TMDLs And Pollutant Trading,” 4 Vt. J. Envtl. Law 1 (2003)
• Justice Denied? The Adjudication of Extradition Applications, 37 Texas Int’l L. J. 277 (2002)
• Gwaltney of Smithfield Revisited, 23 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Policy Rev. 557 (1999)