The Environment Court of New Zealand (Māori: Te Kooti Taiao o Aotearoa) is a specialist court for planning permits and environmental issues. It mainly deals with issues arising under the Resource Management Act, meaning that it covers a wide range of potential future effects of planning applications, which can include such areas as traffic congestion, noise/pollution emissions and social and commercial consequences, rather than just the 'ecologic' aspects that could be implied by the 'environmental' term.

The history of independent appeal courts addressing environmental matters began with the establishment of Appeal Boards under the Town and Country Planning Act 1953. The first planning appeals were heard in February 1955. The Appeal Boards were replaced by the Planning Tribunal following the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act 1977.

The Environment Court replaced the Planning Tribunal as a result of the Resource Management Amendment Act 1996.

The Environment Court has a substantially larger role than the Planning Tribunal, with expanded functions and powers over planning, resource consents and enforcement. Virtually all important processes and decisions under the Resource Management Act 1991, such as regional policy statements, regional and district plans, resource consents and water conservation orders, may be reviewed in the Environment Court.

Brian J. Preston (born 10 July 1958) is currently the Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales. He was appointed on 14 November 2005.

Preston graduated from Macquarie University in 1982. He practised as a solicitor from 1982 to 1987, and as a barrister from 1987 to 2005.

Preston was Principle Solicitor at the NSW Environmental Defender's Office from March 1985, overseeing its official opening in May that year.

Laurence Henry Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. He also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters.

Tribe is widely recognized as a leading liberal scholar of constitutional law. He is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 35 times.

Tribe was born in the World War II Shanghai ghetto to parents of Askenazi Jewish descent, originally from modern-day Belarus. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, California. He holds an A.B. in mathematics, summa cum laude from Harvard College (1962), and a J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1966), where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Tribe was a national champion policy debater at Harvard, and later a college coach and high school summer institute teacher.^{[citation needed]}

Tribe served as a law clerk to Mathew Tobriner on the California Supreme Court from 1966–67, and as a law clerk to Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1967–68. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in 1968, receiving tenure in 1972.^{[citation needed]}

Jeffrey Ross Toobin (born May 21, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker.

Toobin was born in New York City, New York., the son of former ABC News and CBS News correspondent Marlene Sanders, and news broadcasting producer Jerome Toobin. He attended Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, in New York City and attended Harvard College where he covered sports for The Harvard Crimson, using the column name "Inner Toobin." He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982 and earned a Truman Scholarship. He is also a 1986 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic as a law student. He went on to become a law clerk to a federal judge and work as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial, before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn. He then took up his post in 1993 at The New Yorker, and became the first television legal analyst in 1994, at ABC.