The Environmental Law Program (ELP) at the William S. Richardson School of Law is one of the leading environmental law specialty programs in the United States, established in 1988 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Richardson Law School is consistently ranked among the top 25 U.S. law schools for environmental law, and the ELP contributes to the advancement of environmental law doctrine, scholarship, and practice locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally — with a particular focus on the legal and ecological questions of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.
The program offers a Certificate in Environmental Law and supports a wide range of courses, two student moot court teams (one on national pollution control and one on international environmental disputes), externships, pro bono projects, and the Environmental Law Clinic, which provides direct non-litigation legal services to rural and underserved communities in Hawaiʻi. Faculty, students, and alumni publish widely on Hawaiʻi’s environmental law, land use, and Indigenous peoples’ law issues. The program has graduated more than 280 students with certificates in environmental law, who now work in private firms, government offices (including the Office of the Attorney General and the Hawaiʻi Legislature), public interest organizations from Earthjustice to the Pacific Legal Foundation, federal agencies (U.S. DOJ, U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard), Native Hawaiian legal organizations, and the judiciary.
