Amy Laura Cahn

Through movement lawyering practice and scholarship, Amy Laura collaborates with organizers and communities to confront the cumulative effects of racial segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, and environmental and climate risk and support self-determination. Amy Laura is a part-time lecturer at Tufts University, teaching Climate Policy and Climate Justice. She is also a Visiting Professor and Director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School. Prior to joining Tufts and VLS, Amy Laura served as Senior Attorney and Interim Director of the Healthy Communities & Environmental Justice Program at the Conservation Law Foundation, launching CLF's community lawyering program. Amy Laura joined CLF from the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia, where she was a Skadden Fellow and Director of the Garden Justice Legal Initiative—the nation's first urban agriculture law clinic. For five years, Amy Laura served as legal counsel to residents in the frontline floodplain community of Eastwick in addressing the legacy injustices of this country's largest urban renewal project. Amy Laura has clerked for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division. Amy Laura sits on the Penn Law Alumni Advisory Board for Inclusion & Engagement, the Legal Advisory Board for Alternatives for Community and Environment, and is part of a national team of academics, attorneys, and advocates launching the Just Transition Lawyering Institute. She is a longtime community organizer and co-founder of Lower Manhattan's Bluestockings Bookstore. She has a B.A., summa cum laude, from Hunter College and a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.