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Environmental Justice
Environmental law must serve all communities. Vermont Law School strives to arm our students with the full range of tools they might need to assist a community in overcoming an environmental challenge.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE CLINIC
Founded in 2019, VLS’s Environmental Justice Clinic focuses on interdisciplinary practice at the intersection of civil rights and the environment. Student clinicians work in partnership with communities of color and low-income communities on projects to address racial discrimination and improve environmental quality. Students work in small teams on projects to address inequality and discrimination in environmental decision-making as well as procedural inequities experienced by communities as they try to assert their own vision for the future of their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Clinic Director Amy Laura Cahn is an environmental and climate justice attorney who brings experience in community-based movement lawyering from her work at the Conservation Law Foundation and the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia.
CLINIC PROJECTS
■ Work with communities of color in Alabama to fight harmful impacts of landfills and other polluting facilities that have disrupted their way of life
■ Partner with community-based groups across Vermont and other states to strengthen policies to achieve environmental and climate justice
■ Work with environmental justice activists to draft stronger federal and state protections through legislation at federal and state levels
■ Advocate for state and federal policies to ensure enforcement of civil rights laws that protect environmental justice
■ Challenge the disproportionate impacts of industrial animal production on communities of color and low-income communities
■ Partner with a network of Black farmers to create technical assistance resources on land access and land tenure
CLIMATE JUSTICE PRACTICUM
This course is an innovative collaboration between Yale School of Public Health and Vermont Law School and includes faculty and students from both Yale and VLS. Interdisciplinary student teams carry out applied projects at the intersection of climate justice, law and public policy, and public health. Each team works with a partner organization to study, design, and implement a project. Projects include creating short and long-term strategies to address health and wellbeing impacts of energy insecurity on low-income residents in Connecticut, and developing law and policy strategies to address the cumulative impacts of environmental and climate risks and harms on communities of color and low-income communities in Philadelphia.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COURSES
■ Environmental Crimes
■ Environmental Justice
■ Global Food Security and
Social Justice
■ Land Use and Racial Justice
■ Native Americans and the Law
■ Race and the Law Seminar
■ Toxic Exposure and Health
THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE CLINIC AND CLIMATE JUSTICE PRACTICUM ARE INTERDISCIPLINARY AND DRAW ON THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND NORMS OF LEGAL PRACTICE, SCIENCE, PUBLIC POLICY, AND PUBLIC HEALTH. THEY ARE ALSO INTERSECTIONAL, RECOGNIZING THE INFLUENCE OF INTERSECTING SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION ON THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF PEOPLE MARGINALIZED BY INEQUITY. AND THEY PRACTICE COMMUNITY-BASED MOVEMENT LAWYERING AND RESEARCH. IT IS OUR JOB TO TAKE LEADERSHIP AND LEARN FROM OUR CLIENTS AND ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS, AS WE SHARE OUR EXPERTISE TO SHIFT POWER.
—AMY LAURA CAHN, Director, Environmental Justice Clinic
