Ann Powers

Professor Ann Powers is an emerita faculty member of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law’s Center for Global Environmental Legal Studies at Pace University. She has taught a range of environmental courses, including the law of oceans and coasts, international environmental law, UN diplomacy, and water quality. Her scholarship includes articles on emerging ocean issues, water pollution trading programs, and other subjects.

Professor Powers has worked with various projects of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), including the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law and the Oceans, Coasts & Coral Reefs Specialist Group of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law. She served on the ABA’s Sustainable Development Task Force and as ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources’ (ABA SEER) Liaison to the IUCN Law Academy, and is the International Council of Environmental Law’s (ICEL) Representative to the UN.

She has served on many boards and panels, including the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law, the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute, the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic. In connection with her work and professional activities she has testified on numerous occasions before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and state legislatures and commissions.

Until joining the faculty in 1995 Professor Powers was vice-president and general counsel of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a major regional non-profit environmental organization, where she supervised the Foundation’s legal work and its pollution control advocacy program. Professor Powers also served as a senior trial attorney in the the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, handling both civil and criminal cases, and as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Columbia.