For Immediate Release
November 3, 2008


Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Georgetown University Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff is pleased to announce the establishment of the Georgetown State-Federal Climate Resource Center. This is the first Center of its kind to focus exclusively on the state-federal relationship and to promote the role of states in climate policy.

"Climate change is the single most important environmental issue of our time," said Aleinikoff. "It is our hope that the Center will make an important contribution to the creation of an overarching U.S. climate protection effort."

The Center will serve as a resource to states and provide input on climate legislation and regulatory developments under the Clean Air Act; bring together state leaders and federal officials to address climate policy challenges; monitor state, federal and international developments; respond to information requests about state policy from congressional offices and federal agencies; and offer analytical support to states and local governments seeking to protect and promote their role in climate policy. National conferences, as well as briefings and roundtable discussions on Capitol Hill, are also planned.

The Center will be led by Georgetown Law Professor Lisa Heinzerling, who will serve as faculty director, and newly hired executive director Vicki Arroyo. Heinzerling served as an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts before joining Georgetown. In 2006, she was lead author of the Massachusetts and other petitioners’ winning briefs in the Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA. Arroyo was recently appointed vice president and general counsel of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, where she has directed policy analysis for the past ten years. She has twenty years of experience in the environmental field. She is a 1994 graduate of Georgetown Law.

The initial funders for the Center are the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

 

About Georgetown University Law Center 

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.