Jennifer K. Rushlow

Jennifer Rushlow is Dean of Vermont School for the Environment, Professor of Law, and Faculty Director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. Dean Rushlow is also serving temporarily as Interim Dean of Vermont Graduate School.

Dean Rushlow received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law and Master of Public Health from Tufts University School of Medicine. Dean Rushlow practiced law at the non-profit advocacy organization Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and the law firm Anderson & Kreiger in Boston. Her practice focused on environmental and land use law, climate change, agriculture, transportation, and environmental justice.

While at CLF, Dean Rushlow argued and won a landmark climate law case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Kain v. Department of Environmental Protection, 474 Mass. 278 (2016). She also founded CLF’s Farm and Food program, including the Legal Food Hub, a free legal services clearinghouse for farmers and food businesses.

She was named a 2016 Lawyer of the Year by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly for her work on the Kain case. Mayor Martin Walsh also honored Dean Rushlow with a Greenovate Boston Award in 2016 for her work on the Legal Food Hub. In 2015, she was honored by Governor Deval Patrick with an appointment to serve on the Massachusetts Zero Emission Vehicle Commission.

Dean Rushlow published an article about the Kain case, “Behind the Curtain: Insiders’ View of Developing and Enforcing State Climate Change Laws,” 50 Envtl. L. Rep. 10466 (2020). In 2022, Dean Rushlow joined Plater, et al. as a co-author for the environmental law casebook Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law, and Society, 6th ed. (Wolters Kluwer), for which she is contributing a new chapter on energy and climate law. In addition to climate law and policy, Dean Rushlow has published on issues related to air pollution, environmental health, land use, administrative, and municipal law. Dean Rushlow regularly appears in the media, including coverage by the New York Times, Time Magazine, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, E&E News, and others.

Dean Rushlow serves as Chair-Elect of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Environmental Law. She is also appointed by the Vermont courts as Reporter for the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence, for which she authors Reporter’s Notes for rules amendments. She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First and Ninth Circuits.

Dean Rushlow’s courses taught include: Air Pollution Law and Policy, Climate Change and the Law, the Environmental and Natural Resources Clinic, Evidence, and Food Justice and Sustainability.