Carmen G. Gonzalez
Carmen G. Gonzalez is a Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law.
Professor Gonzalez has taught in the areas of Environmental Law, Hazardous Waste and Toxics Regulation, Torts, Administrative Law, International Trade Law, and International Environmental Law.
While in academia, Professor Gonzalez has advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on international environmental justice matters by serving as member and vice-chair of the International Subcommittee of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Professor Gonzalez also worked as legal representative for the Basel Action Network (a non-governmental organization seeking to curb the export of hazardous wastes to developing countries) during the negotiation of the Liability Protocol to the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. Finally, Professor Gonzalez was a member of the Steering Committee of the Facility Reporting Project, a multi-stakeholder initiative to produce a framework for corporations to report the environmental, social and economic impacts of their operations at the facility level. The Facility Reporting Project is sponsored by the Boston-based Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), a coalition of institutional investors and environmental organizations concerned about corporate social responsibility.
After earning her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, Professor Gonzalez clerked for Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She was subsequently an attorney at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, where she specialized in environmental litigation. From 1991 to 1994, Professor Gonzalez worked as a transactional attorney at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. From 1994 to 1998, Professor Gonzalez was assistant regional counsel in the San Francisco office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). At EPA, Professor Gonzalez handled a wide variety of environmental cases involving Superfund and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. She also served on the U.S. EPA team addressing environmental problems along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Professor Gonzalez has published widely on the environmental and social justice implications of trade liberalization. One of the distinguishing characteristics of her scholarship is its interdisciplinary nature. In order to analyze the environmental and socioeconomic impact of trade liberalization, her work draws on the insights of other disciplines, including ecology, economics, sociology and political science.
Professor Gonzalez was a Fulbright Scholar in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she taught International Environmental Law at the Universidad del Salvador. She also spent a year in Ukraine working on an environmental law project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 2004-2005, Professor Gonzalez served as one of four Supreme Court Fellows selected by a panel of distinguished lawyers and judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. Professor Gonzalez was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University during Fall 2006. In Spring 2007, she taught Torts and International Environmental Law in Nanjing, China, at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, a joint project of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nanjing.
