Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic

Under the leadership of Director and Clinical Professor Wendy B. Jacobs, the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic 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. Depending on the project, students may undertake litigation and advocacy work by drafting briefs, preparing testimony, conducting research, developing strategy, and reviewing proposed legislation.

Some students work off-campus with government agencies and nonprofit organizations, while others work on-campus on cutting-edge projects and case work under the supervision of Director Jacobs and Staff Attorneys Shaun Goho and Nicole Rinke.

NOTE:  The Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic recently moved to its new offices located in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, and Clinical Wing Building.  Our new address is 6 Everett Street, Suite 4119, Cambridge MA  02138.  The clinic's phone and fax numbers remain the same. 

Current projects include:

• Municipal climate change adaptation: Representing the City of Boston, the Clinic students is investigating the City's authority to take action and adopt measures to address climate change adaptation at the municipal level.  This is an ongoing, multidisciplinary project in the Clinic.
• Industrial aquaculture: In another ongoing Clinic project, the Clinic is finishing a policy paper on the regulation of aquaculture that draws on the lessons learned from the subsidies supplied to industrial agriculture.  The paper will be circulated to legislators, regulatory agencies, and environmental organizations.
• Hydraulic fracturing: Although largely unregulated at the federal level, hydraulic fracturing has enormous potential environmental impacts at the local level.  In response, some municipalities would like to impose some regulation.  The Clinic has worked on several issues related to hydraulic fracturing, including drafting a guide for landowners who are approached by a gas developer about signing a lease, investigating the authority of municipalities to regulate hydraulic fracturing directly or indirectly through regulations that apply to any industrial enterprise in the community, and commenting on proposed regulations that allow the use of well brine for dust suppression on roads.
• Forest carbon credits: The Clinic is examining the ability of institutional landowners' selling carbon credits from forest lands that they own and the advisability of doing so.
• Assessing regulatory reliance on private standards: In a collaborative project with the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment, the Clinic is examining whether, and if so how, the regulation of offshore drilling in the Arctic should incorporate private standards such as industry best management practices.
• Organic food amicus brief: The Clinic will be writing an amicus brief on behalf of organic food producers in a case involving the deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa, which may result in the genetic contamination of organic alfalfa--a crucial feed for organic dairies.
• Solar photovoltaic litigation: The Clinic represents small renewable energy companies in litigation related to a new interpretation of the electrical licensing laws adopted by the Massachusetts Board of State Examiners of Electricians.  The Board claims that all aspects of a solar photovoltaic (PV) installation must be performed only by licensed electricians.  The Clinic is defending the ability of small businesses to continue performing the financial, planning, and other non-electrical parts of PV projects.