Students interested in energy and environmental law and policy will have the opportunity to study this year with David J. Hayes, JD ’78, an expert from the field who recently finished four and a half years of service in the Obama administration as the deputy secretary of the Department of the 
Interior. Back at Stanford Law this academic year as a distinguished visitor from practice, Hayes is teaching a law and public policy seminar, Creating New Legal Tools to Address the Environmental Impacts of Energy Projects, that will explore the effects of energy and large infrastructure projects on land, water, and wildlife. Part of the new Stanford Law and Policy Lab, the seminar will explore the domestic energy boom currently under way in the United States, focusing on new energy projects sited on both private and public lands, including wind, utility-scale solar, oil and gas, and associated transmission lines and pipeline projects, and related impacts of these projects on local environments. Students will work “in real time” on new state and federal initiatives to develop more expedited and effective mechanisms to compensate for environmental impacts of energy and other infrastructure projects, collaborating with policymakers in Sacramento and Washington in evaluating new regulatory and market-based options to address the environmental impacts of energy-related projects.

Throughout his career, Hayes has been involved in developing creative solutions to environmental and natural resources challenges. As the second-in-command at the Department of the Interior, he served as the department’s chief operating officer with line authority over Interior’s 70,000 employees, $12 billion dollar budget, and the department’s 10 major bureaus and agencies. Hayes also served as deputy secretary and counselor to the secretary of the Department of the Interior in the Clinton administration. In addition to his government service, he was a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he chaired the international law firm’s environment, land, and resources department. He is a former chairman of the board of the Environmental Law Institute; he was a consulting professor at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment; he served as a senior fellow for the World Wildlife Fund and was the vice-chair of the board of American Rivers. He has written and lectured widely in the environmental and natural resources field. The president recently appointed Hayes to the Advisory Council to the Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking that is addressing the global 
epidemic of ivory poaching and trafficking, which is decimating elephant and rhino populations in Africa and Asia. SL