Cale Jaffe

Cale Jaffe is director of the Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic. Through his work with the clinic, Jaffe has represented a diverse array of public-interest clients, from a community group working to preserve an early 20th-century black schoolhouse in Cumberland County, Virginia to local governments filing amicus briefs in the Supreme Court of the United States. He also serves as director of PLACE, the Program in Law, Communities and the Environment, along with Richard C. Schragger.

 

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Virginia, Jaffe was an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a leading environmental law and policy organization working at national, state and local levels. From 2013 to 2016, he was director of the center’s Virginia office. In 2014, Jaffe was appointed by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to serve on the Governor’s Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission.  In 2020 he was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam to serve on the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission.  

 

Jaffe graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in American studies. He earned his J.D. and an M.A. in legal history from the University of Virginia. While a student at Virginia, he served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, and was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Raven Society. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Norman K. Moon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and Judge Roger L. Gregory of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.