“Effective advocacy is about understanding both the how and the why, critically assessing the benefits and downsides of the full range of advocacy tools.”
-Christophe Courchesne
Christophe, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. To begin, could you introduce yourself in your own words—your career path, what drives your work in environmental law, and your goals at Vermont Law and Graduate School?
I am an advocate and litigator, and now a teacher and academic. As a kid, I loved the outdoors in my home region of New England and was fascinated by environmental problems and how society was and wasn’t fixing them. Even then, I was motivated to take on the looming dangers of climate change and advocate against unjust environmental and public health outcomes. So I took that interest to UMass Amherst and Harvard Law School.
I had the good fortune to build a career in environmental law: in private practice at Goodwin Procter, a large firm where I learned invaluable lessons about how businesses approach environmental issues; as an advocate at Conservation Law Foundation, a non-profit that uses the law to fight for environmental progress here in New England; and as a leader at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, responsible for advancing its public-interest mission on issues like the climate crisis and local pollution through litigation and policy work.
I came to Vermont Law and Graduate School—one of the leading environmental law schools in the country—with the hope that I could help prepare its passionate students to go out into the world and take on the challenges I was facing in practice, among many other needs for smart, strategic lawyering and advocacy. Through clinical teaching, I am embracing the opportunity to do that, along with continuing to work with amazing clients on important issues in the real world.
And now, as director of the Environmental Law Center, I am excited to help bring together scholars, students, and practitioners from around the world to shape the direction of environmental law and develop innovative solutions to the many crises we are confronting, including climate, environmental injustice, public health risks, the energy transition, food systems, biodiversity, animal welfare, and international conflict. There is no better place than VLGS—with its legacy of leadership, its beautiful setting in Vermont, and its independence—to build the needed collaborations to respond to the dangers of the present moment and the daunting environmental challenges we face.
Your legal career spans private practice, nonprofit work, and government service. What experiences most shaped your approach to environmental advocacy, and how have they informed your current work training future lawyers and advocates?
I learned a tremendous amount in each practice setting. Private practice provides insights into the way business works, the factors motivating business decisions, and the power of private capital to promote—or in many cases undermine—environmental progress. Conversely, government service shows how complicated it can be to make prudent, well-informed decisions that are transparent and truly responsive to the “public interest.” Advocates who can appreciate these dynamics and account for their complexity will be more strategic and effective, with a better sense of when to challenge and when to collaborate with government and businesses. In my teaching, I seek to familiarize my students with all sides of advocacy projects while centering our clients’ goals. And I emphasize that, through smart advocacy, we can uphold the vital, underlying goals of environmental policy—protecting our ecosystems, our climate, and our communities—that brought us to this work.
You’ve worked at the intersection of environmental and racial justice. In your view, how can environmental law more effectively address inequality and systemic harm, and how is this being brought into the classroom and clinical settings?
Environmental law must address and systematically incorporate these issues of equity and justice. It is a moral, political, and legal imperative. The backlash against environmental justice efforts demonstrates that they have been making an impact and beginning, at long last, to change traditional approaches to environmental decisionmaking. We must keep our focus on addressing the needs of marginalized communities and building the momentum at the state and local levels.
Learning about environmental and other forms of systemic injustice are core parts of our law and graduate curriculum at VLGS, including our experiential programs. We require all JD students to take a class on systemic racism and have a dedicated Environmental Justice Clinic, with a focus on community lawyering.
You’re now at the helm of both the Environmental Law Center and the Environmental Advocacy Clinic. What innovations or goals are you most excited about implementing in these programs, particularly to enhance experiential learning?
Together with our Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment, the Environmental Law Center is the home to an incredible group of environmental law faculty and staff, and it leads a portfolio of affiliated law and policy programs at VLGS that are among the strongest in the country—in food systems, clean energy, animal welfare, and transnational environmental issues. The Environmental Law Center also has a long history of convening leading scholars and teachers from around the world during a summer session and a fall colloquium. In honor of longtime VLGS professor and climate expert Pat Parenteau, this year we are also welcoming two legal fellows to campus as part of the Parenteau Climate Action Fellow program, which provides a pathway for newer lawyers into clinical and academic careers focused on practical work and research on climate law. I am excited to champion the innovations that emerge from our programs and, with my amazing colleagues, to inspire and engage our students to lead the future of environmental law and policy.
At the Environmental Advocacy Clinic, I am especially excited to work with my students—who are so motivated to fight the climate crisis—on the frontiers of climate accountability policies and litigation. It is empowering for them, too, to use litigation to hold the government to its promises under our administrative, environmental, and natural resource laws. We put students in immersive leadership roles in Clinic cases, and they enter the workforce understanding the landscape of environmental advocacy and having done real, cutting-edge litigation for real clients. Experiential learning will increasingly be at the center of legal education, and VLGS’s nine clinics and our externship program are providing high-quality practice opportunities so students can hit the ground running after they graduate.
With legal education under increasing pressure to evolve, how are you helping students develop the skills to lead in environmental policy and advocacy—not just as litigators, but as strategic thinkers and community partners?
Clinical legal education is so powerful because students take on all the roles of attorney and advocate in doing real work for clients and then they have the opportunity to reflect with their faculty supervisors and classmates on those experiences. Effective advocacy is about understanding both the how and the why, critically assessing the benefits and downsides of the full range of advocacy tools—from coalition work to lawsuits, from written comments to public hearings, from community listening to street protests. Wherever possible, we work in partnership with our clients to develop advocacy strategies so that students get the full context for those efforts and are prepared to think strategically when they start practicing.
Much of your work supports issues that align with global sustainability goals—from clean energy to climate resilience and environmental justice. Can you share any examples of how your efforts have contributed to practical progress in these areas, either in or out of the courtroom?
To take just one example at the nexus of climate resilience and environmental justice, both our Environmental Advocacy Clinic and Environmental Justice Clinic have the honor of working with LEAD Agency, an Oklahoma-based environmental justice organization that is fighting for public health in and around the Tar Creek watershed, a disadvantaged area home to many Native tribal groups and affected by one of the country’s oldest and most dangerous Superfund sites. The area also faces damaging flooding caused by the management of a downstream hydropower dam, which is likely to get worse with climate change. Our students have worked with LEAD Agency to develop comment letters, seek disclosure of public documents, build administrative records before federal agencies, and file a D.C. Circuit amicus brief—all to bring the community’s voice about its public health and environmental needs into highly technical and opaque agency and judicial processes. Without our work, LEAD Agency may not have had the resources to participate in these proceedings, which are ongoing.
How can legal institutions stay responsive and proactive in their role?
Legal institutions must not shrink from standing up for democracy and upholding the rule of law, including the unambiguous requirements of our keystone environmental laws. And we must avoid cynicism and keep trying new approaches, recognizing that state and local initiatives are essential and can lay the groundwork for effective federal policies in the future.
Looking forward, what excites you most about the next phase of your work—both in legal education and in the broader fight for climate and environmental protection? What kind of legacy do you hope to leave for the students and communities you serve?
What excites me is the energy and enthusiasm of my colleagues and my students. It is contagious and a powerful tonic for the bad news around us. For VLGS and the legal profession as a whole, the challenges and injustices of the moment are a call to action.
As legal educators, the VLGS faculty and staff in our environmental and experiential programs are working every day to train the next generation of lawyers, advocates, and policy professionals, and our students are uniquely equipped to make early, meaningful contributions to their fields: in community legal practice, environmental law and policy, local food systems, animal welfare, clean energy, restorative justice, and more. Over the last fifty years, VLGS alums have made a major, positive impact around the world on these fronts. Now we will need to reimagine and rebuild a just, sustainable future, and the accomplishments of our current and future students will be our legacy.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Now we will need to reimagine and rebuild a just, sustainable future, and the accomplishments of our current and future students will be our legacy.”
-Christophe Courchesne
Links
- Connect with Christophe Courchesne via LinkedIn.
- Visit Christophe Courchesne’s profile at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Share Your Insights
We’d like to hear your thoughts on the conversation with Christophe Courchesne.
- What role should law schools play in preparing future environmental advocates?
- How can legal strategies better address environmental and racial justice together?
- What innovations do you think are most needed in environmental law today?
Share your insights in the comments.
Alignment with the UN SDGs
- SDG 13: Climate action through legal training and litigation
- SDG 16: Promoting justice and strong institutions
- SDG 10: Addressing environmental and racial inequality
- SDG 17: Supporting global partnerships through education and advocacy
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