Michelle Benedict Nowlin
Senior Lecturing Fellow and Supervising Attorney for the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic
Michelle Nowlin joined the Duke Law faculty in June 2008, as a Supervising Attorney and Senior Lecturing Fellow for the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. She supervises students from the law school and the Nicholas School of the Environment who work in the clinic and co-teaches the seminar portion of the clinic.
Professor Nowlin has dedicated her career to the protection of natural resources and public health through the practice of environmental law. She joined the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill in 1995 after completing a fellowship awarded by the Ford Foundation and two years in private practice. For the next 13 years, she represented non-profit environmental and community organizations throughout the southeast on a wide variety of issues. She led SELC's Hog Industry Project and helped develop state laws and the first comprehensive regulatory programs for factory hog farms in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. She also participated in precedent-setting litigation establishing the authority to regulate factory hog farms under the federal Clean Water Act, and establishing the state's authority to address secondary impacts of permitting decisions. She also participated in a groundbreaking settlement between the state of North Carolina and agricultural corporations to study and develop new technologies to manage, treat and utilize waste from factory farms. During her tenure at SELC, she also developed regulations governing the protection and allocation of water during droughts and the protection of groundwater quality, drafted legislation to improve regulation of the inter-basin diversion of rivers, and represented organizations in court to protect coastal resources and wetlands. She participated in precedent-setting litigation to protect Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge by forcing the United States Navy to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, and to protect the Catawba and Yadkin Rivers from massive diversions of water. For her advocacy work, she received the North Carolina Audubon Society's Advocacy Award in 2006, and the Bill Holman Award for Environmental Advocacy, awarded by the Conservation Council of North Carolina in 1997.
Professor Nowlin is a member of the North Carolina Bar and the D.C. Bar, and is admitted to practice in the state courts of North Carolina, the United States District Courts for the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina, and the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. She currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for Toxic Free NC and is a former board member for the North Carolina Conservation Network and currently serves as President for Toxic Free NC. She is a past chair of the Environment and Natural Resources Law Section of the N.C. Bar Association. Professor Nowlin has also spoken at numerous conferences organized by the N.C. Bar Association, ALI-ABA, Water Resources Research Institute, U.S. EPA, Society of Environmental Journalists, and USDA.
Professor Nowlin earned her B.A. with Highest Honors from the University of Florida, where she was also inducted into Florida Blue Key and Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a dual J.D./M.A. from Duke Law School and the School of the Environment in 1992. While at Duke, she was on the founding committee and served as editor-in-chief of the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum.