Guerrilla Lawfare: Using Public Affairs in Legal Campaign
PANEL DESCRIPTION
High profile environmental cases are no longer fought only in briefs and courtrooms. Public affairs campaigns, media strategy, and grassroots pressure increasingly shape how cases are perceived, argued, and ultimately resolved. This panel looks at how coordinated public facing efforts can influence litigation outcomes in the growing arena of guerrilla environmental lawfare. Panelists will discuss how lawyers and public affairs professionals work together to move the needle before, during, and after litigation. Topics include narrative development, ethical boundaries, managing public scrutiny, and using public engagement to support legal strategy without undermining credibility in court.
Moderated by Kaya Johnson.
ZYGMUND PLATER, BOSTON COLLEGE
Zygmunt J. B. Plater is emeritus Professor of Law at Boston College Law School and, currently based at The University of Maine Law School, is teaching and managing a multi-school EL-T environmental law-teaching program in which selected law students design and teach courses for undergraduates, with faculty status. He has taught on eight law faculties in the US and abroad. His teaching and research have focused on environmental, property, land use, and administrative agency law. Over the past 30 years he has been involved with numerous issues of environmental protection and land use regulation, including service as petitioner and lead counsel in TVA v. Hill, the extended endangered species litigation over the Tennessee Valley Authority's Tellico Dam. Along with his students he represented farmers, Cherokee Indians, environmentalists, and the endangered snail darter in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal agencies, and congressional hearings. He was chairman of the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission’s Legal Task Force after the wreck of the M/V Exxon-Valdez. He was a consultant to plaintiffs in the Woburn toxic litigation, the subject of the book and movie A CIVIL ACTION. Drawing upon his work for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Commission he researched and consulted on responses to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While teaching public law for three years in the national university of Ethiopia, he redrafted the laws protecting parks and refuges, assisted in publication of the Consolidated Laws of Ethiopia, and helped organize the first United Nations Conference on Individual Rights in Africa. He is senior author of ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY: NATURE, LAW, AND SOCIETY, now in its sixth edition, Carolina Academic Publishers, 2026.
MARK SCHLEIFSTEIN, THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
Mark Schleifstein is a freelance environment reporter based in the New Orleans area and advises the four-person reporting team at The Times-Picayune and the multi-reporter team with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk.
In 2025, he was an environmental reporting fellow of the Walton Family Foundation.
Schleifstein retired in December 2024 as an environment reporter for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate | NOLA.com, after 40 years with the paper when it was owned by Advance Publications and, since 2019, The Advocate of Baton Rouge.
He also is on the advisory board of SciLine, a service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps reporters on deadline contact scientists who have been vetted for their research and their ability to talk to journalists. As a member and former board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, he also moderates that organization’s main listserve, SEJ-Talk.
Schleifstein was presented the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award for his reporting on coastal issues. He also was awarded the 2025 David Stolberg Meritorious Service Award, given to a Society of Environmental Journalists member for exceptional volunteer work to the organization.
Schleifstein's stories on Hurricane Katrina were among the Times-Picayune's stories honored with 2006 Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service and Breaking News Reporting. He's the co-author of the 2006 book, "Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms," about Katrina. He’s co-author of the award-winning 2002 series, "Washing Away," which warned that New Orleans could be flooded by hurricane storm surge. He also was co-author of the 1996 series, "Oceans of Trouble: Are the World's Fisheries Doomed?", which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Two other series he co-authored were Pulitzer finalists: "Home Wreckers: How the Formosan termite is devastating New Orleans," published in 1998, for national reporting; and "Louisiana in Peril," about the state’s petrochemical industry, published in 1991, for explanatory journalism. A number of his other stories for The Times-Picayune and The Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger have won both national and local awards.
Before joining The Times-Picayune, he worked for five years for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger; four years for the Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot; and one year for the Suffolk, Va., News Herald. Mark is a member of the board of directors of Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation. He has two grown children and four grandchildren.