Alumni Spotlight: Mike Farrar ’65
Judge, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Mike Farrar, an administrative judge with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is ready to help the agency sort through some 300 environmental and safety complaints tied to a landmark Department of Energy proposal affecting America’s energy future.
The proposal—to bury spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants deep inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain—would respond to waste disposal concerns that have dogged nuclear energy for decades. While it once appeared that Congress and the White House had agreed on this approach, the political winds have shifted now, favoring the search for an alternative solution.
Nevertheless, the NRC has to assess which of the 300 claims of deficiencies filed by the State of Nevada and other parties should be scheduled for hearings. Farrar, a Notre Dame undergraduate who earned his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School in 1965, is among those gearing up to conduct oral arguments at the end of this month. This is the first step in what will be a very crowded schedule of adjudications to be jumpstarted if Washington eventually decides to let the Yucca Mountain plan proceed.
The federal government has been preparing for this venture for years. In Las Vegas, it has built arguably “the largest, most electronically advanced, most physically secure courtroom in the world,” Farrar says, noting the need to efficiently share huge amounts of data among judges, litigants, experts, and the general public, plus the need to maintain security around people and resources who could be targeted by terrorists.
Farrar, whose career positions have included Federal District law clerk, attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency, and corporate environmental officer, marvels at the route that has led him to the NRC. Coupled with his diverse experience in business and government, his background in environmental law and nuclear regulation prepares him to understand the interdisciplinary nuances of the pending legal challenges.
Even more importantly, Farrar thanks Notre Dame Law School for a background capable of confronting Yucca Mountain’s complexities. The prospects could be daunting: an enormous docket of administrative adjudication concerning health, safety, and environmental risks that span not only generations but millennia, all taking place in a “courtroom of the future” where high technology demands both efficiency and prudence.
He remembers long-time dean (and recently ordained priest) David Link talking futuristically about electronic courtrooms. He remembers the Law School’s emphasis on a comprehensive core of courses with the explanation that “most of you will be practicing a kind of law that hasn’t been invented yet.” Mastering the basics of legal thinking included learning “not to put everything in a box” of pre-digested, specialized understanding.
He also remembers the Law School project that taught him the maxim, Audi Alteram Partem, “hear the other side,” as a general principle of wisdom as well as justice.
Says Farrar, “Such memories are the best preparation for future challenges.”
