Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic

> Visit the ELPC Website

The Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic (ELPC) offers students an opportunity to do hands-on, meaningful, real-life, and real-time environmental legal and policy work. Clinic offerings include local, national, and international projects covering the spectrum of environmental issues, under the leadership of Director and Clinical Professor Wendy Jacobs. Depending on the project, students may undertake litigation and advocacy work by drafting briefs, preparing testimony, conducting research, developing strategy, and reviewing proposed legislation. Past projects have included:

• Filing an amicus brief in support of a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case about the disposal debris from mountaintop removal coal mines in streams
• Developing a legal roadmap for the rapid deployment of carbon capture and sequestration in the United States.
• Analyzing the concept of "clean, renewable energy" and whether the burning of animal waste qualifies.
• Advocating for the adoption of federal public lands policies that would mitigate the effects of climate change and promote adaptation to climate change.
• Serving as Special Regulatory Counsel to Massachusetts in connection with development of a comprehensive Ocean Management Plan.
• Assisting municipalities in their efforts to protect an ecologically-sensitive estuary from construction activities and a buried pipeline.
• Advising scientists on the potential legal consequences of their studies of household exposure to environmental contaminants.
• Advising consumers about options for purchasing electricity generated by renewable power.

Clinical Information

Fall or Spring clinical
Open to 2L, 3L students
LLM students by permission
Prerequisites: Prior HLS environmental law course.  See below for list of eligible courses.
See fall clinic description in course catalog
See spring clinic description in course catalog

Course Information

In 2011/2012, enrollment in ELPC will be for clinic credits only, but the clinic has a pre-/co-requisite of a prior HLS environmental law course.  Students must have previously completed or concurrently take one of the following HLS environmental law classes during the semester of clinical work (enrollment in these courses is separate and independent of clinic enrollment.): 

• Climate and Energy Law and Policy (Spring 2010)
• Climate and Energy Seminar (Spring 2012)
• Environmental Law (Fall 2010, Spring 2012)
• Environmental Advocacy: Administrative Hearings / Working with Scientists Seminar (Fall 2011)
• Environmental Advocacy: Citizen Suits Seminar (Spring 2012)
• Federal Public Land and Resources Law (Fall 2011)
• International Environmental Law (Winter 2011)
• Natural Resources Law (Spring 2011)
• Water Law (Fall 2011)

Contact

Clinical Professor Wendy Jacobs
Pound Hall, Suite 501
Harvard Law School
wjacobs@law.harvard.edu
617-496-2058