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Mission
The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic serves two vital and interdependent functions:  providing an opportunity for law students to practice environmental advocacy and serving New Jersey's environmental community through trial and appellate litigation, administrative advocacy and policy development. 

Public Interest Environmental Law in New Jersey
The Clinic has been the sole public interest law firm for New Jersey's environmental community since 1985. Since the Clinic's founding, more than 500 Rutgers law students have helped successfully resolve hundreds of cases. The Clinic works with the Eastern Environmental Law Center, a public interest law firm located on Rutgers' campus in Newark, New Jersey. Students provide thousands of hours of pro bono legal assistance each year.

As a result, the Clinic has litigated many of the most important environmental cases in the State on topics as varied as land use/sprawl, transportation, clean water, clean air, environmental justice, endangered species, hazardous waste site remediation, public access to beaches and other public lands, open space, parkland preservation and energy policy. The Clinic's cases are frequently litigated before the New Jersey Appellate Division and Supreme Court, as well as Federal court, municipal planning boards, and municipal zoning boards. The Clinic also provides ongoing advice and counsel to environmental and community organizations. The Clinic currently has a docket of over 50 matters, approximately 2/3 of which are litigation matters and 1/3 of which are a combination of policy and administrative matters. For a representative docket, click here.

Clients
The Clinic serves a broad range of clients, including New Jersey's major environmental organizations, local community associations, and national organizations concerned with New Jersey issues.  See a list of our clients and a sampling of their testimonials.

The Student Experience
The Clinic's active docket and position as counsel to New Jersey's environmental movement in turn provide students with a valuable opportunity to acquire and hone litigation and advocacy skills.  Supervised casework is the heart of the students' Clinic experience and occupies the bulk of their time.  Since many of the Clinic's cases involve challenges to agency action before the Appellate Division and ultimately the New Jersey Supreme Court, Clinic students can expect to research and draft appellate briefs and to participate in moot arguments.  Clinic students can also expect to argue motions before trial courts, to examine witnesses and to make oral arguments before planning and zoning boards, to meet with high-level officials in State government on policy and legislative initiatives, to visit local communities to advise clients on legal strategies for addressing environmental violations, and to investigate and to initiate litigation.  In brief, students participate in all aspects of litigation, client counseling and advocacy conducted by Clinic staff attorneys.  The Clinic also includes a seminar component.  For a copy of our current syllabus, which also describes course requirements, grading and other matters, click here.

Testimonials
Here is a sampling of what some of our clients have to say about the Clinic, its students and its attorneys:

"The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic plays an absolutely irreplaceable role in protecting New Jersey's environment. As the environmental community's de facto law firm, the clinic's attorneys and students enable us to win in ways that would otherwise be unimaginable. Just the Clinic's very existence serves as a strong deterrent to polluters and public officials who might otherwise feel unrestrained from violating environmental law and/or failing to provide appropriate environmental safeguards. However, the clinic's effectiveness goes well beyond mere existence -- just in the past year, the Clinic has successfully represented environmental interests that would otherwise have gone unrepresentative from Cape May and Plainfield parks to Pinelands snakes and Highlands stormwater."
David Pringle, Campaign Director, NJ Environmental Federation

"Concerned Citizens Coalition (of Long Branch) is very grateful to the staff of the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic for the tremendous assistance and services provided in our effort to help assure that the contaminated site of the former Long Branch Manufactured Coal Gas Plant is properly remediated and neighboring residents receive the required assistance."
Julia Wheeler, Chairperson, Joseph E. Turpin, Secretary, Concerned Citizens Coalition

"The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic (RELC) plays an indispensable and unique role in the New Jersey's environmental landscape. Through their sage legal advice and sound representation, the legal playing field of David v. Goliath is leveled. NJ Audubon Society could not hit conservation home runs without partnering with the professionals and students at the Clinic."
Thomas J. Gilmore, President, New Jersey Audubon Society

"The Clinic has helped a group of dedicated citizens do what local officials were unable or unwilling to do:  apply the law to protect the interests of out community.  Perhaps more important, the Clinic has engendered an 'environmental intelligence' in all of us.  We have learned about the laws that can protect us; we have learned how to apply them; and we have learned how to work through our local government, the NJDEP and the legislature to make more of them.  You have empowered us to be agents of change."
Nick Corcodilos, Co-Chair, Clinton Township Community Coalition

"The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic provides an irreplaceable resource and service to the cause of protecting New Jersey's environment. The staff and student attorneys provide a voice and advocate for the public within the legal system that would be absent without them. The state of the law protecting the environment in New Jersey, and often nationally by way of example, has been tremendously strengthened by their work."
Tim Dillingham, Executive Director, American Littoral Society

"In working to preserve the Pequannock River, my organization faces significant issues that impact the potable water supply for almost half-a-million citizens. Increasingly this work requires access to legal representation or legal counsel. As a relatively small grassroots group with limited funding, the cost of providing these legal resources could severely diminish our effectiveness, or in some case entirely halt our progress. In this regard the legal services provided by the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic have allowed us to operate successfully on a broad range of critical venues. Repeatedly the support of the Clinic [] has been absolutely integral to our success. We must also note that the Clinic has not only provided legal assistance, but quality legal assistance."
Ross Kushner, Executive Director, Pequannock River Coalition

"Law Clinic assistance enables communities to synthesize complex scientific facts and develop and understanding of the law in order to form concise legal strategies.  The Law Clinic has also represented the Edison Wetlands Association in several important legal matters where environmental justice and the protection of human health and natural resources were involved."
Robert Spiegel, Executive Director, Edison Wetlands Association

"The Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic provides legal and technical advice to help NJPIRG be a better advocate for New Jersey's environment.  We depend on and applaud the high quality work of [] the clinic staff and students, whose work is at the forefront of the most pressing threats to New Jersey's environment.  In addition to the great work of the clinic, the experience they provide law students is so important.  We absolutely need more, committed and skilled defenders fighting for the environment and public health, and that's just what the clinic is helping to develop." 
Dena Mottola, Executive Director, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group

"The Clinic's guidance and legal work on our behalf has been absolutely essential to our success to date. The extension of a sewer line into the Washington Valley raises a panoply of state issues, policies and regulations, including supporting the policies and goals of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan (e.g., no sewer infrastructure should be built in Planning Areas 4 and 5); protecting the Highlands province; safeguarding the Category 1 waters of the Whippany River, the Valley's exceptional value wetlands, and the Tier 4 habitat mapped in the State's Landscape Project;  and preserving the integrity of the first national historical Park created in the United States, the Jockey Hollow section of Morristown's NHP.  The Clinic's assistance has been particularly critical in helping 'persuade' NJDEP to adhere to the Wastewater Management Planning regulations as they are applied by the Department in Morris Township.  This was a campaign undertaken against tremendous odds and it was countered by an unprecedented lobbying effort on behalf of the Township and a religious order which is a development applicant in the Washington Valley.  The Great Swamp Watershed Association is extremely grateful for all of the Clinic's assistance."
Julia Somers, Executive Director, Great Swamp Watershed Association
 

 
Representative Docket 

Clients
The following list includes those clients with active cases in our docket:

Environmental Law Clinic
Spring 2007 Syllabus