UT law student M. Zack Hohl has been announced the winner of the Ohio State Bar Association’s 2012 Environmental Law Award for his paper titled “The Great Lakes Compact: States Suffering from Withdrawal.”

The article will be published in the OSBA Environmental Law Symposium and Hohl will receive a prize of $1,000 donated by the Ohio law firm McMahon DeGulis LLP.

Hohl’s winning paper analyzed the goals and framework of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact by evaluating the exemption for bottled water under the Compact. After being signed and ratified by the eight Great Lake States, including Ohio, the Compact was ratified by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2008.

According to Hohl, “While the Compact is admirably thorough and a major step toward sustainable development in the region, if the Compact is weakened (either through state action or exploitation of exemption like that for the bottled water) it will be incredibly difficult for states to act ontheir own. Therefore, it is important that states and individuals follow both the letter and spirit of the Compact if we are to achieve sustainable use of our regional waters.”

“The new Compact is vital to Ohio and this region,” said Ken Kilbert, associate professor at the College of Law and director of its Legal Institute of the Great Lakes. “Zack’s paper is a terrific piece of legal work and will be very useful to lawyers, judges and policymakers.”

Hohl will graduate summa cum laude this month, and will deliver the Class Address at commencement, which will be 1 p.m. Sunday, May 6 in the Student Union Auditorium.

While at UT College of Law, Hohl has collected highest ranking student awards in several classes, including his environmental law,natural resources law and water law courses. Hohl also serves as articles editor for The University of Toledo Law Review and as co-president of the Environmental Law Society.

Moreover, Hohl’s scholarship during his law school career will be published not once, but twice. The article “Legal Tools for Reducing Harmful Algal Blooms in Lake Erie” that Hohl co-authored with Professor Kilbert and Tiffany Tisler ’11 will be published in the upcoming fall issue of The University of Toledo Law Review.

According to an OSBA press release, the Environmental Law Committee asked that submissions for the 2012 Environmental Law Award advance the application and practice of environmental, energy or resources law in the State of Ohio. Submitted articles were judged on the following criteria: relevance to the practice of law in Ohio, timeliness and importance of the selected topic, organization, quality of legal analysis, quality of legal research and quality of the overall writing. A panel of environmental lawyers and OSBA members reviewed the submissions to select the winner.

For more information contact Rachel Phipps, assistant to the dean for communications in the UT College of Law, at 419.530.2628 or rachel.phipps@utoledo.edu.

Media Coverage
The Independent Collegian (April 26, 2012)

Tags: College of Law