For some reason this summer has been crazier than ever before. I am not sure it is a function of 2012 being especially full of stimulating and exciting things, or if it just took 3 years in the academy to start scratching the surface of all the cool things going on out there.
One new experience for me this summer has been works in progress (WIP) workshops. I started out my summer attending one for junior environmental law scholars at American (hosted by Amanda Leiter). I just got back from an amazing one in Colorado (hosted by CU-Boulder and Duke). These two events had rather different crowds but a similar mission. At American, there were only 5 papers and we dug deeply into each one. We were all junior scholars and we had good conversations about the process of writing and submitting articles as well as the substance of the articles themselves. It ended with a short field trip. This was American's first stab at such a workshop, but I heard murmerings of it becoming an annual event.
At Colorado, the theme was supposed to be Climate Change (although a few of us were slightly off topic) and there were 12 papers. We talked in depth about the papers here but did not tackle related topics. This was the fifth year of this workshop and all the repeat players said it was their favorite conference/workshop that they regularly attended. The senior scholars outnumbered the yet-to-be-tenured folks. As a junior scholar, this was intimidating but there were many reassurances that everyone understands the pieces to be "in progress." This event was also followed with a field trip (my new favorite thing about the field of land use and environmental law is all the field trips). It was a bit more than I was up for as a group hiked over 10 miles up to a peak of about 13,000 feet but luckily Christy Klein of Florida used her local knowledge of the area to show me some beautiful places within a stone's throw of the hotel.
I presented different papers at these conferences (one on constitutionalizing state public trust doctrines and one on heritage conservation easements — two topics that blog readers will certainly hear more about in coming months), and it was great to get such detailed and helpful feedback. I almost wish I had presented the same piece as it would have been interesting to see how these different groups approach the same work. [Ah well, just have to try to get them both to invite me back so I can try out that experiment.]
I also learned about a WIP event at University of Washington for junior environmental law scholars (but was unable to attend) and have heard rumors about a property WIP too. Plus of course, we recently posted on this blog about the first State and Local Government WIP session.