Cale Jaffe

Associate Professor of Law, General Faculty
Director, Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic

Biography
Publications
Courses
Media

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.

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.

Education

J.D.
University of Virginia School of Law
2001
M.A.
University of Virginia
2001
B.A.
Yale University
1995

Articles:

"Environmental Federalism as Forum Shopping," 44 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol'y Rev. (2020).
SSRN

"Melting the Polarization Around Climate Change Politics," 30 Geo. Int'l Envtl. L. Rev. (2018).
SSRN | HeinOnline (PDF)

"The Toxic Legacy of Coal Ash on Southeastern Rivers, Waterways, and Reservoirs," 40 Wm..& Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev. 577 (2016).
SSRN | PDF

"Environmental Law" (with Sean M. Carney), 45 U. Rich. L. Rev. 287 (2010).
LexisNexis

"Air in the Balance: Rewriting the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review Program," 54 Va. Lawyer 30 (Oct. 2005).
PDF

"An Uneasy Rebirth for the Clean Water Act: How Changes in Federal Case Law Impact ‘Isolated’ Wetlands in South Carolina," 16 S.C. Lawyer 36 (Mar. 2005).
Available at: next.westlaw.com

"Obligations Impaired: Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright and the Failure of Reconstruction in South Carolina," 8 Mich. J. Race & L. (2003).
SSRN

"The Wetlands Commons: What the Virginia Nontidal Wetlands Resources Act of 2000 Says About the Future of Environmental Regulation," 20 Va. Envtl. L.J. 329 (2001).
Link

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs:

United States Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, (2020).
PDF

Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, (2019).
PDF

County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, (2019).
PDF

Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, (2018).
PDF

Book Chapters:

“EPAs Nondiscretionary Duties to Act Under Section 115” (with Michael Livermore), in Michael Burger eds. Combating Climate Change with Section 115 of the Clean Air Act (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).
Link