About the Center
In 2019, CWRU School of Law received a $10 million gift to launch the Burke Center for Environmental Law. The size of this transformative gift instantly put CWRU on the map in the environmental law field. Our location in Cleveland, on the shores of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River, in a region confronting the full range of contemporary environmental challenges and opportunities, renders the Burke Center an especially important player in this area.
CWRU Professor Jonathan H. Adler, one of the most cited authorities in administrative and environmental law, was named director of the Burke Center when it was founded. In 2023, Professor Victor B. Flatt, an expert on the Clean Air Act, climate and energy law, became associate director of the Center. In 2025 Professor Adler moved his primary law school affiliation to William & Mary College of Law, and transitioned into a role as the Burke Center’s Founding Director and Senior Fellow. In this role, he will continue to contribute to the Center’s programming excellence.
With the support from the endowment and newly introduced Coleman Burke Environmental Law scholarships, the law school will expand its environmental offerings by adding new externships, organizing impactful conferences and recruiting the next generation of environmental law leaders.
In our 3L capstone, our students may pursue semester-long, full-time externships at environmental non-profits or governmental agencies. Options range from local governments and local environmental advocacy organizations including Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services, to national advocacy organizations and federal agencies, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in Washington, D.C.
Scholarships are available for students wishing to pursue their experiential capstone outside of northeast Ohio.