While Michigan Law School in 2003 comes in a close second, I have to say that teaching International Environmental Law in 2011 at 
the Australian National University College of Law has been my best experience yet — and that’s since 1994 when I initiated the subject for the first time at Melbourne University Law School. It may have something to do with student appreciation (click thumbnail), but that’s only a small part.
It’s really that this year’s students have been the keenest that I’ve ever had the privilege to teach. They embraced with initiative and enthusiasm the idea of running a Symposium on IEL, at which they presented the results of their own research, as a the assessment for the course. They even created the first ANU Environmental Law Students Society as part of the process to support the Symposium. In anticipation of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, students came up with the idea of Towards Rio+ 20: Contemporary Issues in International Environmental Law around which to organise the symposium.
The Symposium was held yesterday and was a great success. In the end we had 134 people registered to attend — and a turn out of about 110. Naturally, the presentations of our invited speakers (see program) were excellent, but student presentations were also 
top quality. Students ran the entire event superbly from beginning to end and even arranged for the first live webcast of an academic event from the College of Law – a screen shot is captured in the thumbnail to the right.
A hearty congratulations to all my students.
We will be uploading a video recording of much of the proceedings to the Symposium website. I’ve uploaded one example here, the shortest segment, my own presentation.
