Keynote Remarks: Re-Tooling Law and Legal Education for Food System Reform: Food Law and Policy in Practice

Abstract

This essay is adapted from Emily Broad Leib’s remarks at the 2015 Seattle University Law Review Symposium, Re-Tooling Food Law: How Traditional Legal Models Can Be Re-Tooled For Food System Reform, held March 6, 2015 at Seattle University School of Law. The essay examines the essential skills law schools and lawyers can bring to the field of Food Law and Policy. It begins by relaying the author's personal background and journey to the field of Food Law and Policy, then defines this field of law and shares some metrics about the field’s growth over the past few years. To explain what this field looks like in practice, the piece then introduces four fundamental legal tools that make lawyers well situated to foster change in the food system. Concrete examples based on the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic’s work illustrate the use of each tool. The essay ends by advocating for more lawyers in this field and discussing some of the opportunities that exist for new lawyers seeking to pursue this work as a career or a passion

Keywords: Food, clinical teaching