Vermont Law School - Centers, Institutes, Clinics, and Programs

Centers, Institutes, Clinics, and Programs

Law Centers and Research Institutes

• Environmental Law Center—The Environmental Law Center (ELC) began in 1978 with eight master's degree students. Today, the ELC its program is consistently top-ranked by U.S.News & World Report, and confers both the Master of Environmental Law and Policy (MELP) and Master of Laws in Environmental Law (LLM) degrees. The Class of 2008 included 87 students receiving these master's degrees.
• Institute for Energy & the Environment—The Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE) is a national and international resource for energy law and policy. The institute offers a full course curriculum and a certificate of concentration during the academic year and through its Energy Summer seminars; distributes scholarly, technical, and practical publications; provides forums and conferences for professional education and issue development; and serves as a center for graduate research on energy issues, with an environmental awareness. The Institute’s research team is selected from top students in the energy and environmental programs at Vermont Law School. IEE student researchers work on some of the most pressing energy concerns the world faces today,including energy self-reliance, carbon sequestration, and renewable energy sources. The Institute maintains the IEE blog focused on current events and research.
• Environmental Tax Policy Institute—The Institute analyzes ways in which taxation can address environmental problems. As a resource for the public and private sectors, non-governmental organizations, the press and academia, the Institute seeks to better inform the public policy debate about the role of environmental taxes at the local, state and federal levels.
• Land Use Institute—The Land Use Institute (LUI) addresses intensifying land use law and policy issues at the local, national, and international levels that critically pertain to the development of a sustainable society. These issues include application of smart growth principles, ecological planning, affordable housing, flood hazard mitigation, improving the confluence of energy and land use regulatory decision-making and other permitting processes, and land conservation strategies. LUI works with VLS faculty and students, and other nonprofit legal and professional planning partners, to provide sound and innovative information, experience, and education to advance the practice of land use law and planning. This mission is served through direct support for local and regional planning agencies, forums and conferences for issue development, preparation of legislation affecting critical land use issues, education and training for state and local land use planners and regulators, practical and scholarly publications, and graduate professional teaching.

Clinics and Experiential Programs

• Environmental & Natural Resource Law Clinic—The clinic's advocacy has produced significant accomplishments and raised visibility of environmental issues, including winning a major victory for the endangered gray wolf; protecting wetlands and tributaries; standing up for the health of individuals threatened by the mining operations of a major, multi-national company; and defending a sacred tribal site. Student clinicians work on behalf of public interest, environmental, and conservation organizations, and learn how to find their way through the complex maze of laws and procedures that regulate economic development and resource extraction activities.
• South Royalton Legal Clinic—The South Royalton Legal Clinic (legal clinic for the area's low-income residents) was established in 1979. In 2007–08, the clinic supervised 58 clinicians and work-study students and handled a caseload of 119 cases.
• General Practice Program—The General Practice Program (GPP) was instituted in 1987. The GPP is recipient of the American Bar Association's E. Smythe Gambrell Award for Professionalism, a national award for law schools and other organizations in recognition for advancing professionalism in the practice of law.
• Legal Clinic of Petrozavodsk State University - Under the patronage of Vermont School of Law at the Faculty of Petrozavodsk State University opened the first legal clinic in Russia in October 1995, supported by the Council of Judges