{"id":1210,"date":"2021-04-20T12:15:15","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T12:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.law.fordham.edu\/elr\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2021-04-20T12:15:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T12:15:15","slug":"spotlight-series-4-professor-david-cassuto-decide-what-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/?p=1210","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight Series #4: Professor David Cassuto \u2013 Decide What Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Michael Albalah, Managing Editor, Fordham Environmental Law Review<\/em><\/p>\n

Surely, Professor David Cassuto<\/a>\u2019s career path is atypical (he was a professor before he was a law student!), but I still managed to leave the conversation feeling inspired.\u00a0 He positioned environmental policy challenges at the forefront of his intellectual curiosity and essentially, just kept returning to what mattered to him.\u00a0 His more traditional accolades (elite law school, competitive clerkships, litigation firms) didn\u2019t derail Professor Cassuto from contributing by teaching and leading a bilateral international environmental stewardship initiative.<\/p>\n

Prior to going to law school, he was an English professor who studied how literature and politics intermingled viz a viz water policy in the Southwest region of the United States.\u00a0 In fact, he was motivated to go to law school because he figured it would make me a better academic.\u00a0 So as a 1L, Professor Cassuto (who again, was then a professor!) believed that he was only <\/em>there to become a more informed scholar.\u00a0 As a student at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, in between the best burritos the country has to offer (his words, not mine!), he finished his book and studied under the great environmental legal thinker, activist, and scholar Joseph Sax<\/a>.\u00a0 But then, after law school, Professor Cassuto found himself clerking.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s true he was thinking of returning to academia as a Clerk, he ended up practicing.\u00a0 This is where the process of returning to what matters to him began.<\/p>\n

After practicing complex litigation at a Big Law firm, Professor Cassuto moved to a firm that specialized in land use law in San Francisco.\u00a0 There he worked on complex civil litigation, mostly around securities fraud but was exposed to land use through the firm\u2019s specialization.\u00a0 He kept his sights on possible federal jobs with an environmentally focused agency like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Justice.\u00a0 But Professor Cassuto began to think about what he wanted to actually be doing as a lawyer.\u00a0 I believe it was here that Professor Cassuto learned the lesson he shared with me at the end of our conversation: the law is endlessly fascinating, but that doesn\u2019t mean that everything lawyers do <\/em>is.<\/p>\n

It, therefore, makes sense that his next career move was to return to academia<\/a>.\u00a0 In addition to teaching at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Professor Cassuto currently serves as the director of the Brazil-American Institution for Law and Environment (BAILE<\/a>).\u00a0 The abbreviation doubles as the Portuguese synonym for dance.\u00a0 In this role, Professor Cassuto facilitates bilateral engagement on environmental topics by engaging in both legal regimes and developing lasting relationships.\u00a0 To Professor Cassuto this kind of work is necessary, and because of its size, population, and home to the world\u2019s most important natural resources, Brazil, in particular, is an ideal partner.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of our conversation, Professor Cassuto observed that the law is fascinating and a great thing, but that it doesn\u2019t necessarily follow that a lawyer does fascinating and great things.\u00a0 He recommends trying stuff.\u00a0 First figure out what you care about, then just try different things.\u00a0 I\u2019m inspired to act on his advice.<\/p>\n

Professor David N. Cassuto came to Pace in July 2003 from Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP in San Francisco, where he practiced complex civil litigation. Prior to that, he was an associate at Pillsbury Winthrop LLP in San Francisco and served on the Executive Committee of the San Francisco Bar Association\u2019s Environmental Law Practice Group. Before entering private practice, Professor Cassuto clerked for the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.<\/em><\/p>\n

A former professor of English specializing in literature and the environment, Professor Cassuto has published and lectured widely on legal, literary, and environmental issues. He is also a frequent speaker on legal and cultural studies. <\/em><\/p>\n

He was a Fulbright Fellow at FGV Direito Rio, in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in 2010, is a visiting professor at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and is the Class of 1946 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Environmental Law at Williams College.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Albalah, Managing Editor, Fordham Environmental Law Review Surely, Professor David Cassuto\u2019s career path is atypical (he was a professor before he was a law student!), but I still managed to leave the conversation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}