Students at the University of Michigan Law School are able to submit Notes for consideration for publication in the Michigan Law Review. The Res Gestae will be interviewing student authors whose Notes will be published in Vol. 123 of the Michigan Law Review to ask them about their experiences writing and submitting Notes.
David Holmes’ Note, titled “The Dormant Power of State Agencies to Fight Environmental Racism,” will be featured in Vol. 123 of the Michigan Law Review.
The note chronicles a fight over an asphalt plant just outside Flint, Michigan and the novel approach through which the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) added requirements for emissions and testing.
To EGLE, those requirements were “rooted in environmental justice concerns, which was a pretty novel approach, particularly given that Michigan doesn’t have environmental law legislation,” David said. “And I thought that was a really, really interesting model for fighting environmental injustice.”
Even in the process of writing a piece as daunting as a note for Michigan Law Review, David made sure to stay true to himself and his background. Before law school, David wrote for various publications about venture capital in Silicon Valley, with brief stints writing about more environmental issues.
This experience guided David to include some aspects of journalistic form while keeping the academic tone required in a note. He included a narrative driven introduction, strengthened by citing an interview with Nayyirah Shariff, a long-time resident of Flint and director of a community group suing EGLE.
“I wanted to talk to Nayyirah,” David said. “Because I come from a journalism background, and I would love to see legal academic writing engage with people’s voices on the ground a bit more, much like good journalism does.”
Like any good journalist, David knew that finding experts to help with ideas and legwork is always helpful. In fact, that’s how he got the initial idea for the note.
“I learned about this case from Professor Nick Bagley … he was chief legal counsel for Governor Whitmer,” David said. “I talked to him about wanting to write a note and said some of the things I was interested in … And he was like ‘let me tell you, there’s a case going on in Flint that combines those two things.’”
David hopes that being open about asking Professor Bagley about Note ideas will encourage other potential note writers to look to professors for inspiration and advice.
“To be honest, I think [professors] are just swimming with note ideas, but they just don’t have time to write them all,” David said.
But at the same time, David maintained that molding the idea into a finished product is entirely up to the author.
“I actually think that the direction I took the note in was not necessarily the direction he would have taken,” David said. “Just because they are giving you the sort of starting point, that does not mean you are parroting the views of a professor by any means.”
Since graduating from Michigan Law School in 2024, David is now in commercial litigation at Simpson Thacher’s New York office. But he is open to working in the field of environmental law in the future and intends to do pro bono work while at Simpson Thacher.
While in law school, David was an Executive Editor with Michigan Law Review, a role that David described at times to be “painful.” But, when it came time to write the Note, he found it to be a great foundation.
“As I was writing the Note, I thought a lot about how happy I was that I applied to be an Executive Editor and did that work,” David said. “Any trepidation or regrets I had about being an executive editor, I think were sort of washed away by writing the Note.”
David’s Note journey involved pulling from his past experiences and not being afraid to bounce ideas off of others involved in the field. If you are thinking about writing a note, don’t be afraid to follow his lead and do the same. It may just enrich your experience and result in a fuller work product as well.
Res Gestae Writer Josh Messe can be reached at jmesse@umich.edu.
