Students in the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy (EJLA) Clinic represent Tribal Nations, community groups, and non-profit organizations and coalitions on multi-modal advocacy projects that advance environmental justice and address intersectional concerns such as Tribal sovereignty, energy and climate, public health, civil rights, natural resource management, and participatory environmental governance. The clinic prioritizes legal services for underserved and historically marginalized communities. Through an integrated advocacy approach and close partnership with clients, the clinic tackles complex, neglected, and emerging environmental problems and aims to train creative, reflective, and collaborative lawyers prepared to advance novel solutions to hard problems.
Clinic projects tackle issues such as:
- Inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens
- Exclusion of impacted communities from decision-making processes on land use, energy, water, and related environmental matters
- Just transition to sustainable economies
- Site restoration and greenspace development
- Advancement of healthy homes and communities
- Repair for communities that have been alienated from environmental resources and governance.
Projects involve a range of advocacy modalities and tools appropriate to the needs and objectives of the representation, including litigation, administrative rulemakings and adjudications, legislative advocacy, policy development and reform, and media engagement.
Accompanying team-based fieldwork, weekly clinic seminars bring EJLA members together to explore the theory and practice of environmental justice lawyering. Seminars introduce key bodies of law and issue areas engaged in the clinic’s docket, develop core practice skills, explore the attorney-client relationship and the ethic of community-based and client-centered lawyering, and provide space for peer review and workshopping of student attorney work product.
Clinic Faculty:
Stephanie Safdi, Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Jane Jacoby, Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law
Work with the Clinic:
For new matter inquiries, please contact ejla@yale.edu.
Newsroom:
Clinic Wins Rare Appeal in California Highway Expansion Case, April 4, 2025
Clinic Files Petition in California Highway Construction Case, December 12, 2024
Spring Rains Delay Six Lakes Testing, October 22, 2025.
