About Us
The Emmett Environmental Law Center at Harvard Law School is committed to solving our most pressing environmental challenges — threats to clean air and water, the degradation of public lands and wilderness, climate change, and the urgent need to protect public health.
We do this by working with public and private sector partners to advance effective and durable legal strategies and training the next generation of environmental law leaders. We produce in-depth legal analysis, host multi-party convenings, stress-test policy proposals, moot legal arguments, participate in rulemakings and litigation, track legal and regulatory developments, host a leading podcast, and more, all with the help of our talented students. In addition, we collaborate on cross-disciplinary projects across Harvard University — including with the Business School, the Kennedy School, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability — working on urgent issues like climate-related methane emissions, corporate net-zero strategies, and equitable energy transitions.
Strong environmental law remains the backbone of progress. It shapes the incentives that drive markets, influences innovation and infrastructure, and defines the protections that safeguard our communities and ecosystems. Whether through Congress, the courts, or federal and state agencies, law drives outcomes. The Emmett Environmental Law Center houses our leading environmental law clinic, which students take as a class, and our renowned research program, where students serve as research assistants. It builds on our robust academic curriculum, which offers a diverse set of environmental, climate, natural resource, and energy law courses.
The Emmett Environmental Law Center was established with a gift from Harvard Law alumnus Dan Emmett ’64 and the Emmett Foundation. It builds on his previous gifts to the clinic and program. Emmett is the Chairman of Douglas Emmett Inc. (DEI), a real estate investment trust based in Santa Monica, CA. He was previously president of Santa Monica Baykeeper and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, is a director of Patagonia Inc., and chairman of the Advisory Board of the UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.