On September 23, 2025, faculty, students, and guests gathered for the Fourth Annual J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Distinguished Lecture on Global Climate Change and Energy Law. This year’s lecture was delivered by Professor Lyndon W. Jay Huffington, a Colombian legal scholar from Universidad Externado de Colombia with more than a decade of experience in the mining-energy sector. His lecture, provocatively titled “Clean Energy, Dirty Secrets: Latin America’s Struggles with Illegal Mining and Artificial Intelligence as a Potential Game-Changer for Environmental Justice,” shed light on the contradictions of the clean energy transition and the often overlooked social and environmental costs that accompany it.
The Fourth Annual Shapiro Distinguished Lecture on Global Climate Change and Energy Law delivered by Professor Lyndon W. Jay Huffington.
Her work has already attracted substantial attention, including a feature on the influential blog Turtle Talk. She has presented her research at conferences and other speaking engagements: University of Cuenca – Ecuador’s Rights of Nature Conference, Guest Speaker at Google’s Native American Heritage Month Event, and panelist at the 2025 Bioneers Conference. Her insights will soon reach even wider audiences through the Young & Indigenous podcast.
Maria Jose Alarcon was recently accepted as the first online SJD candidate in GW Law’s Environmental Law program. Originally from Ecuador and currently based in the United Kingdom, Maria is a qualified lawyer in New York, Spain, and Ecuador, and a Solicitor in England & Wales. She brings more than a decade of international legal experience to her doctoral studies. Her academic focus lies in public international law and international environmental law. She will pursue a dissertation on climate change litigation under the supervision of Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies, Randall Abate. Her research explores state responsibility for climate-related harm and its implications for reparations.
Maria’s career has unfolded at the intersection of climate litigation, investment arbitration, and international law. She has served as counsel in the ICJ’s climate advisory opinion proceedings, worked as an associate at leading international law firms, and contributed as a legal researcher at Leiden University, the Sabin Center for Climate Change, the Global Financial Markets Center at Duke University School of Law, and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. She also serves as an Associate Fellow at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). Maria has taught international environmental law and frequently writes on climate change and dispute resolution in leading academic and policy publications. She received a Climate Change Law Diploma from the University of Cambridge (2023) and completed Summer Courses in Public and Private International Law at The Hague Academy (2021). In 2020, she earned an LLM from Duke University School of Law, specializing in environmental law, and was awarded both a Merit Scholarship and the International Peace Scholarship. While at Duke, she served as an editor of the Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law and contributed as an associate attorney to the Working Group for the Amazon at the Nicholas School for the Environment.
By Randall S. Abate, Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies
Malaika Moiz named first Ocean Equity LLM scholar
GW Law’s Environmental Law program is proud to be the first in the nation to offer a scholarship dedicated to supporting one Master of Laws (LLM) degree candidate each year in pursuing a thesis project focused on ocean equity. Beginning in the Fall 2025–Spring 2026 academic year, this initiative expands our program’s emphasis on environmental justice and human rights and environmental protection, empowering students to lead in the emerging field of ocean equity. Ocean equity seeks to protect the rights of communities disproportionately affected by environmental challenges. It focuses on protecting small-scale and Indigenous fishing communities’ access to fisheries, ensuring their livelihoods and cultural heritage are preserved while leveraging their stewardship of marine ecosystems to combat anthropogenic threats such as pollution, overfishing, and climate change. On a global scale, ocean equity also strives to secure equitable access to fisheries for nations in the Global South.
A: Currently, I am pursuing a legal clerkship in Frankfurt, Germany, preparing for the Second State Exam – the bar exam.
Q: What did you study in your Energy and Environmental Law LL.M. and what made this program so special to you?
A: At GW, I was able to delve deep into the intricacies of regulated industries, energy markets, and different fields of U.S. environmental and energy law. Working with professors in and out of class was always enriching. While GW has an impressive faculty of highly qualified law professors and staff, there are also many highly qualified environmental and energy law practitioners in the program’s part-time faculty who add further value by providing first-hand insights into the “real world”. They work for the most prestigious environmental and energy law employers in the government, the private sector, and the public interest community in Washington, D.C. This is a clear advantage that GW has over other law schools in the US and a reason why I chose to come to GW in the first place.
