Winter 2013/2014 Loquitur—The Alumni Magazine for Vermont Law School

w i n t e r 2013 / 14 NON-PROFIT U. S. POSTAGE PAID MAILED FROM ZIP CODE 04330 PERMIT NO. 121

the alumni magazine for vermont law school

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w i n t e r 2013 / 14 Volume 27, Number 1

President and Dean Marc Mihaly Professor of Law AND Vice President for External Relations Cheryl Hanna Editors Jim Collins Peter Glenshaw Ariel Alberti Wiegard Contributing Editors Patty McIlvaine Melissa Schlobohm MELP’12 Contributing Writers Ian Aldrich Kristen Fountain Ben Hewitt Karen Kaliski Jamie Renner Susan Salter Reynolds Special Thanks Lucy Halse MELP’13 Tori Jones J.P.M. Wiegard ’13 Design, Art Direction, and Production Flannel Printing J.S. McCarthy Printers Published by Vermont Law School 164 Chelsea Street, PO Box 96 South Royalton, VT 05068 www.vermontlaw.edu Send address changes to alumni@vermontlaw.edu or call 802-831-1312.

Printed with soy-based inks on recycled paper. © 2014 Vermont Law School

LEFT: Patrons gather at The Worthy Burger, a craft beer and burger bar near the Vermont Law campus.

special food issue

Contents

Nourishment The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems: seedbed and shepherd of a healthier body of law.

DEPARTMENTS

By Kristen Fountain

Letter from the Dean

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Reflections on a school that continues to follow its gut................4

Discovery A consortium brings Vermont’s food players to the table. Plus, partnering with UVM........................6

Class Notes News from the VLSAA, your classmates, and friends..................32

Inter Alia The Farm Bill, climate change, and the 2014 Environmental Watch List......................................47

Vermont Album ............................. 48

Entrepreneurial Spirits What do lawyers have to do with Vermont’s local food movement?

(How Will Duane ’15 spent his summer vacation and maybe found his career.)

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By Ben Hewitt

Grace Before Dinner Philanthropy and public education go hand-in-hand at this influential foundation.

But that’s just for starters.

By Jim Collins

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The Food Network A smorgasbord of VLS graduates who are all over the menu.

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On the cover: Blueberry pie from Lou’s Restaurant, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Photograph by Rob Bossi.

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LETTER FROM THE DEAN

Cookin’ Dear Alumni and Friends, As you read this, Vermont Law School is halfway through its 40th anniversary. This academic year we have much to celebrate, to be grateful for, and to share. But as many of you know from your own lives, “40” has a way of asking us who we are and who we want to be. Vermont Law, despite being an institution, is no different: over the last 18 months we have thought carefully about our mission, our values, and what we want our future to look like.

What did we find? That this law school’s strength is its difference. To a person, every member of our family is unusually engaged in matters of fairness and matters of principle. We are a community of risk-takers and advocates who actually want to change the world, not fit into it. And we are a school that knows you can’t solve the world’s problems without educating the world’s problem solvers.

As we begin the new year, I’m pleased to say Vermont Law and the University of Vermont (UVM) are creating the first “3-2” program in the nation, in which students will complete an undergraduate degree in three years and a JD in two years. Additionally, eight of our faculty will begin teaching at the UVM School of Business Administration as part of the university’s new Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA program. And our two-year, Accelerated JD has proven to be a great success.

We are also working hard to share our news in a way that adds real substance to the legal conversation, and to involve the entire Vermont Law community in living and broadcasting our mission.

To that end, it is only fitting that the magazine you are holding now—a first, teasing glance at the new Vermont Law—is our Food Issue. We believe that food is a unique vehicle for change, as it is intimately tied up with everything from human health and the environment, to poverty and immigration, to law, politics, and culture, on every step of its journey from farm to plate.

Food also brings people together in a way that few other things do, and at this time of change we find ourselves in very good company. (“Company,” if you didn’t know, is derived from the Latin com (together with) and panis (bread), meaning those who break bread together.) Our alumni are helping to fund the future of food and farming; our faculty are studying the front lines of the movement; and even our food service providers are filling our bellies and our souls with local, organic products. We are all working together for a resilient future.

As this issue reminds us, Vermont Law is an incredibly fertile place that encourages innovation and risk-taking. Put simply, we have and will continue to follow our gut. And we are hungry for the next course.

Sincerely,

Marc Mihaly President and Dean

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DISCOVERY

Vermont: THE Emerging Epicenter of Food Systems Education The presidents of six Vermont higher education institutions, include Vermont Law School, signed a memorandum of understanding in November 2013 to create the Vermont Higher Education Food Systems Consortium.

This unique program will pool the resources of public and private colleges devoted to food-systems education, training, policy analysis, and research, and will make Vermont a premier destination for postsecondary students with an interest in promoting sustainable and robust food systems. Degrees in food systems will range from agricultural production and sustainability to diet and nutrition-related curricula.

The collaboration will combine applied studies of agriculture from the state’s technical schools, research focus from the University of Vermont, and a postsecondary education in public policy component at Vermont Law School.

Vermont Law School President and Dean Marc Mihaly attended the signing ceremony at the Statehouse in Montpelier, along with Laurie Ristino, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law. “This collaboration advances an alliance between two of Vermont’s major eco-

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nomic drivers—education and agriculture,” said Dean Mihaly. “Vermont Law School believes that restructuring our agricultural enterprise is key to addressing climate change. Each of the schools in the new consortium is devoted to advancing community-based agriculture. Together we can utilize Vermont’s iconic brand to attract more students from around the nation and the world, and offer them a more complete education.”

Vermont is known worldwide for its commitment to local foods, sustainable food production, and for the innovative, entrepreneurial spirit of its inhabitants. Its artisanal products, including cheeses, beer, and maple syrup, are an important part of the state’s economy.

The Vermont Council on Rural Development first advanced the consortium idea. Other participating institutions—all of which offer agricultural education in various forms—include Green Mountain College, Sterling College, University of Vermont, and the Vermont State College system (principally Vermont Technical College).

State executives also attended the event in Montpelier. Jolinda LaClair, Deputy Secretary of the Agency of

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Agriculture, speaking on behalf of Secretary Chuck Ross, said the consortium was a top priority for Ross and the Shumlin administration. “We talk about the renaissance of agriculture,” she said. “It’s real. Today, farming and food systems are luring a new workforce to this sector. There is an opportunity—a very real opportunity for Vermont to be a nationally recognized center for food system education.”

“Vermont’s higher education institutions have graduated generations of Vermont farmers, foresters, and value-added entrepreneurs,” stated Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin.

“Today they are taking a historic step of doing this work better together, with this collaboration offering students from across the country an unprecedented set of experiences in our working landscape. This will attract new youth to rural Vermont communities, spur innovation in the food and forest economies, and help all of us who are working to conserve Vermont’s working landscape in production for the long-term future.” u

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VLS Partners with UVM to Create Innovative New Degrees and Programs In an ongoing commitment to explore opportunities for academic synergies, Vermont Law School and the University of Vermont are collaborating to create concentrated combined degree programs that help students cut costs and enter the job market faster.

The “Vermont 3-2” This past fall, VLS and UVM announced groundbreaking plans to create a joint undergraduate and law degree that would take just five years to complete—three years at UVM and two years at VLS. That’s two years less than the traditional 4-3 route— resulting in substantially lower costs for the students.

The “Vermont 3-2” degree, the brainchild of VLS President and Dean Marc Mihaly and UVM President Tom Sullivan, is part of an effort to make higher education more affordable for Vermonters and to attract additional students from across the nation and the world to study in Vermont. “Both institutions share a commitment to environmentalism, sustainability, and innovation and both play vital roles in Vermont’s economy” said President Sullivan. “We think a strengthened relationship can bring many benefits to our students, our faculties, and to the people of Vermont.”

“The 3-2 program would reduce significantly both the time and the cost of receiving a post-graduate degree,” explained Dean Mihaly.

“Vermont Law already has one of the most progressive JD programs in the nation, and we look forward to working with UVM to help their students reach their educational goals with minimal student debt. We want to ensure we continue to attract and retain the talent we need to support a prosperous future for Vermont.”

The 2-1 Competitive Edge In another collaboration, students would receive an Accelerated Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA at UVM’s School of Business Administration and a law or masters degree at Vermont Law School. Students who take advantage of this accelerated program can earn both the MBA and an Accelerated JD in three years, two years less than the typical time required. Students could also earn an MBA from UVM and a Master’s degree in environmental law or energy law from Vermont Law in two years. In addition to reducing the cost for students, the goal of the collaboration is to train tomorrow’s leaders in both business and law to create profitable and sustainable business opportunities and social enterprises. This opportunity will also be attractive to foreign lawyers seeking highly specialized training in business, law, and the regulatory process in the United States.

Vermont Law faculty will participate each academic year as visiting faculty in the accelerated MBA program, beginning in September 2014. Students who graduate from either the accelerated MBA program or any of Vermont Law School’s degree programs will be guaranteed admission to the other program, provided they meet certain entrance requirements. Vermont Law students will be able to take elective MBA courses at UVM, giving the students from both programs the opportunity to study together.

“This agreement signals a new level of cooperation and engagement between the University of Vermont and Vermont Law School,” said Cheryl Hanna, Professor of Law and Vice President for External Relations at Vermont Law School. “Most importantly, this agreement permits students at both UVM and Vermont Law School

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to benefit from the academic and degree synergies that exist between our schools. Our faculty and students are excited to be part of the most forwardthinking MBA program in the country.”

“I am thrilled and delighted that Vermont Law School faculty and students will soon be an important part of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA,” said Sanjay Sharma, Dean of the School of Business Administration at UVM. “Vermont Law School is the topranked environmental law program in the nation, and will make an important contribution to our curriculum. We have much to learn from each other, and I know there will be new opportunities that emerge from this initial collaboration.”

These initiatives build upon an already successful relationship between the two institutions. More UVM alumni obtain VLS degrees than graduates of any other institution. The two schools have jointly sponsored conferences and currently offer a joint degree that allows students interested in environmental science and policy to receive a dual master’s degree from Vermont Law and UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Most recently, UVM graduate psychology students and Vermont Law students at the South Royalton Legal Clinic began working together to explore how best to serve international survivors of torture who are now part of the Vermont community, and whose requests for asylum are difficult to process because of memory loss and other post-traumatic issues. “This kind of partnership,” noted President Sullivan, “allows our students and faculty to work together to enrich the students’ education while reducing costs—and to make a difference in our community.” u

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DISCOVERY

VLS Conferences Explore National Security and Innovative Criminal Justice Practices Two conferences brought experts from across the country and Vermont to South Royalton this fall to discuss national security and climate change, as well as how innovative practices in criminal justice might be adopted more widely in Vermont.

The first conference, “Rising Temps and Emerging Threats: The Intersection of Climate Change and National Security in the 21st Century,” was organized by the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL) and held in late October, just months after President Obama articulated the need to prepare for weather aggravated by rising temperatures. Symposium participants discussed and debated the nature of the climate change security threat, the U.S. military response to climate change, climate-based forced migration, and food security as national security. The entire conference can be seen on the VJEL YouTube channel (http://bit.ly/1bDYEmx).

Presenters at the national security conference included distinguished representatives from federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academia. The keynote speaker was D. James Baker, Administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and current director of the Global Carbon Measurement Program for the William J. Clinton Foundation. Other speakers included John Steinbruner, Director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, and Jody Prescott, a Senior Fellow at West Point Center for the Rule of Law and retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer.

“Scientists, legal scholars, and advocates from across the nation made one thing clear at the October 2013 VJEL Symposium,” said Molly Gray ’14, VJEL Symposium Editor. “We are nearing the point of no return when it comes

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to climate variability and beginning to witness the human impact of these changes nationally and internationally,” she said. “The speakers called on future leaders at Vermont Law to use their legal education to help shape sensible solutions to this rapidly emerging climate-created security paradigm and to be advocates for rapid action and adaptation.”

In November, the “Innovative Criminal Justice Practices in Vermont” conference focused on programs that are improving criminal justice management throughout the Green Mountains.

“This conference was a chance for everyone involved in criminal justice in Vermont to learn more about innovative practices that could be adopted on a larger scale,” said Robert L. Sand ’87, former Windsor County State’s Attorney, current Senior Policy and Legal

Advisor with the Vermont Department of Public Safety, and criminal law professor at Vermont Law School.

Among the innovations discussed were rapid intervention community courts, court-ordered assessments at arraignment, integrated domestic violence dockets, and the challenges associated with managing drug or alcohol treatment dockets.

More than 200 judges, prosecutors, private defense attorneys, legislators, and other criminal justice stakeholders attended the sold-out conference. Participants included the state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Reiber, Attorney William Sorrell, Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan, Vermont Law School Dean Marc Mihaly, and Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. u

The Road Well-Traveled: Cameron Way Visitors to the Vermont Law School campus see a graceful ring road with a commanding view of the White River as soon as they cross the bridge on Chelsea Street and approach the Oakes Hall entrance. Since last spring, that well-traveled road has been known as Cameron Way. Cameron Way is named in honor of J. Scott Cameron, former chair of the Vermont Law School Board of Trustees and a thirty-year member of the VLS community. Cameron graduated from VLS in 1980. Since then, he has played many roles at the Law School: speaker, trustee, host, donor, and employer. He has exemplified what it means to be a volunteer, and worked tirelessly as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1984-2010.

He has worked with four VLS deans and hired two of them. He received an honorary degree in May 2011, and was the inaugural recipient of the VLS Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award in September 2011. As a donor, Cameron has helped numerous students through the Cameron Scholarship Fund and through other philanthropic contributions.

A version of the campus master plan included a recommendation to remove the ring road entirely and plant an apple orchard where the parking lot currently resides. It was fellow trustee Fran Yates’s suggestion that the road should be kept and named for Scott Cameron. It encircles the 16-acre campus, with access to parking and sloping lawns on the eastern and northern sides that lead down to the river.

The road that bears his name was dedicated in a ceremony at the Chelsea Street entrance to the campus on May 17, 2013. u

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DISCOVERY

Distance Learning Program Adds Partners and Degrees Since its launch in 2011, the distance learning program has extended Vermont Law School’s top-rated environmental law course content to students around the world. This year, the law school is expanding its reach in two ways. A pilot program this year will allow partner law schools to offer select VLS online courses in their course catalogs. In addition, Vermont Law will be adding new online degree programs to its portfolio.

“Law students elsewhere often want to take environmental law courses they can’t find on their own campuses,” says Rebecca Purdom JD ’96/MSEL’98, Associate Dean for Innovation and New Programs, and Associate Professor of Law. “It just makes sense for Vermont Law School to partner with other institutions that need to enhance their own course catalogs.”

A pilot partnership with Boston University will allow VLS to deliver energy and environmental law courses to

students enrolled in BU’s Executive LLM in International Business Law program.

“Students earning a BU degree,” says Purdom, “have the opportunity to take the best energy and environmental law courses available from VLS.” Innovative and simple, the agreement offers multiple advantages. “VLS courses are listed in the BU catalog so students register and pay as they would for any BU course,” says Purdom. “That fact, and being able to remain with their home institution, makes the process frictionless.

BU keeps students focused on its law school and degree program. And VLS doesn’t assume administrative overhead as it gains course participants.”

Purdom hopes to build on the BU relationship and develop similar partnerships with other law schools, including distance learning partnerships that would enhance JD programs, as well.

Vermont Law School is also preparing to make two more of its residential degree programs available online: the

Master’s of Energy Regulation and Law (MERL) and the LLM in Energy Law. Designed to be exactly the same as the residential program in terms of courses and requirements, the 30-credit online MERL focuses on law and policy governing energy use, production, and transmission. The program is awaiting accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), which is expected early in the new year.

In addition, the Master of Environmental Law and Policy (MELP) will also add a concentration next year in food and agricultural law to both its residential and online programs. Both programs serve growing interest in sustainable food systems, a new frontier in environmental law and policy. u

A Gift for the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders In September, Vermont Law announced the second largest gift in the history of the school—$1.5 million from James “Jimmy” Hanson II, president of a New Jersey real estate consortium and a 1983 magna cum laude graduate from Vermont Law School. The gift will be used to strengthen the school’s environmental law and policy program and to expand the leadership curriculum within the Master’s of Environmental Law and Policy program. The only larger gift received by VLS was $2 million from Julien and Virginia Cornell to create a law school library—now the Cornell Library—in 1991.

Ranked as the best environmental law school by U.S. News for the last five years, Vermont Law is known for producing graduates who make a difference, and Hanson wants that tradition to continue.

“VLS is producing advocates,” says Hanson. “It’s not just a vocation, but an

avocation. People come here because they are inspired to make a difference.

It’s that kind of mind-set that really inspires me to give to the law school.”

Under the terms of the gift, Vermont Law will expand its master’s degree curriculum to focus on leadership, financial literacy, modern communications, and advocacy campaigns.

The gift will enable graduates not only to have a legal education, but also an understanding of how businesses run and why leadership plays a vital role in environmental law and policy.

The gift will also be used to support research centers and institutes at the Environmental Law Center.

“Vermont Law School is indebted to Jimmy for this generous gift,” said President and Dean Marc Mihaly. “This commitment provides an important investment in our flagship environmental program, and provides VLS graduates further resources to make

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a difference in their communities and the world.”

“For 40 years, Vermont Law has been helping to create leaders who use the power of the law to make a difference, locally, nationally, and internationally,” Hanson commented. “I am delighted to help ensure that the law school continues its tradition of excellence in environmental law and policy and hope this gift will inspire friends and alumni of VLS to do the same.”

Hanson told a reporter that the idea of giving is strong in his family. Harvey Hoffman, Hanson’s grandfather, was a Protestant minister who instilled in his children and grandchildren a strong foundation for giving. “The concept of giving back has been passed down for generations,” Hanson said. “We’ve been blessed as a family and that enabled us to give back. Giving back to Vermont Law does make a difference in this world.” u

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Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems is on a mission to improve the way a nation grows and distributes its food. It’s a place where students can get their hands dirty.

By Kristen Fountain

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Field Trip: professor Laurie Ristino ( left) and student research associates Emma Hempstead ‘14 and Delilah Griswold ‘14 chat with Suzanne Long, co-owner of Luna Bleu Farm, AUGUST 2013.

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Scenes from a wet summer at Luna Bleu Farm : a family farm pet happy in mud; harvesting zucchini by hand; transplanting greenhouse kale.

t’s less than a mile from the town common in South Royalton to the organic vegetable and hay farm known (ironically) as Hurricane Flats. Last fall, the farm’s owners, Geo Honigford and Sharon O’Connor, finally finished stabilizing 300 feet of riverbank there that had been severely eroded during 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene. The willow shrubs they’d planted helped them restore a 35-foot buffer between their cropland and the White River.

From the same starting point, it’s a five-minute drive north beyond the river to the open-air cow barn and the neat rows of organic vegetables at Luna Bleu Farm, where Suzanne Long and Tim Sanford work a small, diversified farm that includes grassfed beef and free-range chickens.

The couple sells produce and meat to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shareholders, local restaurants, and the South Royalton Cooperative Market, among other places, and at the Norwich Farmers Market, where Long has been on the board of directors for close to a decade. After a discouragingly wet summer that forced them to plow under several ruined crops, Long and Sanford have put the ground to

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bed and are in winter mode, supplying the winter market with harvests from their greenhouse and freezer.

Lawyers- and advocates-in-training at Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) don’t have to go far to observe the daily hard work of producing environmentally sustainable food. In fact, twenty-two small farms and orchards operate within a ten-mile radius of the law school’s central building, Debevoise Hall. For students intent on improving the nation’s current body of food law—which for decades has been geared toward conventional, commoditized, industrialscale production—this is an incredibly fertile place. It’s a place where students can get their hands dirty in an active

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farming region in a state known for its progressive laws and ideas.

To help transform the food system into one that is resilient and sustainable, advocates must go beyond simply keeping up with the new regulations coming out of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Growing and distributing food that is good for people and the planet will require new markets, innovative business models, and new rules governing everything from land use and water rights to food labeling and pesticides. “We want to know what is happening on the ground,” says Laurie Ristino, CAFS’s director, “We want to bring the law alive.”

Until recently, agricultural law was taught in law schools in the Midwest and Plains states as a conventional specialty. Over the last handful of years, though, a few dedicated legal centers around the country have sprung up around the concept of “food law.” The new area of study integrates the legal aspects of agriculture with topics as diverse as food safety, nutrition, and animal welfare. The subject also encompasses the environmental impacts of food production, including climate change.

VLS celebrated the opening of CAFS in October 2010 under the umbrella of its nationally renowned Environmental Law Center. It joined existing centers at Harvard Law School and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. An institute with a similar focus opened in 2013 at the University of California in Los Angeles. Among them all, the Vermont center is uniquely located to focus on a crucial growing part of the national food system: small and mid-size farms, processing facilities, and retailers. Laws and policies at the national and state levels affect them differently than they do the large industrial farms that still feed most Americans. Smaller farms and businesses, like those that dot the landscape in central Vermont, have a smaller environmental footprint and are hotbeds of new ideas. On the processing side, as well, there are creative food partnerships to explore around South Royalton and beyond.

Emily Laine ’15, a member of the law school’s student-run Food and Agriculture Law Society, says the most mind-expanding outing with the group so far has been to the Mad River Food Hub in Waitsfield. The 4,000-squarefoot Mad River facility is equipped for a wide range of food processing and is USDA-certified for butchering and packaging meat, a unique designation for its size. By design, the building is flexible, allowing for intermittent or full-time use by small-scale producers.

The Hub currently hosts companies

that make commercially sold salumi, yak meat, and raw dog food. In addition to providing opportunities for collaboration among the users, the facility also provides small business planning support and, as of last October, a shared delivery truck. “I like to see things like that, that are win-win,” says Laine, who also co-produces Food Talk Radio, a monthly campus podcast on sustainable food issues. The programs are available on iTunes (https:// itunes.apple.com/sn/podcast/food-radio-collectives-podcast/id629304864).

Vermont Law students have the chance to see how the shared-facilityand-resource model works on a larger scale, too. The nonprofit Center for an Agricultural Economy operates the Vermont Food Venture Center (VFVC), a 15,000-square-foot food processing facility in Hardwick. The facility is licensed to house any kind of food production that does not require the handling of meat or dairy products.

Among the roughly 40 VFVC users

Nearly 25 years later, Intervale is leasing 135 acres to eleven different farms.

The farmers are assisted by a group website that supports online ordering and direct delivery to local customers. The Intervale Center has faced a variety of legal and regulatory challenges during its start-up and growth over the years. To the CAFS staff, the organization is just one of Vermont’s many valuable case studies in sustainable agriculture.

“It’s live experimenting in the new food movement,” Ristino says. “A lot of it is happening here.”

Farmers with Law Degrees? ot surprisingly, at least a few Vermont Law School graduates began thinking about embarking on farming careers because of their knowledge of the law, and did so years before the current “food law” concept blossomed. Two of them made small-scale organic dairying profitable by develop-

the tapestry of a sustainable food “ Although system will be woven primarily by individuals who invest their time, money, and labor into farming and food production over the course of a lifetime, lawyers and advocates will be needed to keep the fabric strong.”

are small-scale makers of yam salsas, kale chips, sauerkraut, kombucha, and pretzels.

The oldest of the micro-business hubs, Burlington’s Intervale Center, began leasing a small amount of land along the Winooski River on the north side of the city in 1990. Its goal was to reduce start-up costs for small farmers by making fields, greenhouse space, and equipment all available for rent.

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ing sophisticated on-farm processing operations.

In this, John Putnam ’83 and Amy Huyffer ’00 are bucking a statewide trend towards herd consolidation that began in the 1950s. By the start of the 21st century, the number of farms operating in Vermont had plummeted from 10,000 to 1,000, even as the total number of cows in the state’s dairy herd remained roughly the same.

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Putnam and Huyffer are farmers, but also the kind of dogged and creative entrepreneurs that staff and students with CAFS hope to support and foster.

John Putnam and his wife Janine (also an ‘83 graduate of VLS) bought Thistle Hill Farm in North Pomfret not long after graduation. At first, dairy farming was a part-time endeavor that came second to child-rearing and John’s corporate law practice. When the family got into the business fulltime in the late 1990s, the Putnams quickly realized that even the economics of selling higher-priced organic milk wholesale were not favorable to the farmer.

So they went on a quest. The couple scoured the French Alps for the right microbes and a cheese maker willing to teach them the craft. The result was Farmstead Tarentaise, their high-end, award-winning alpine cheese that has grown so popular that it’s now made both at Thistle Hill and at an affiliated farm in nearby Reading.

Huyffer started Strafford Organic Creamery with her husband Earl Ransom on the dairy farm in Strafford where he grew up (see “Organic,” page 28). Reaching the same conclusion

found that a law degree comes in handy.

“It’s never a bad idea to be able to read a contract or to write one,” Huyffer says.

Putnam believes his legal background made it easier to wade through the complex process of becoming and staying certified to process milk. “If somebody throws a regulation in my face, I’m not the least bit intimidated,” Putnam says.

But going from law books to muck boots is certainly not a common path.

Putnam doubts many farmers would ever seek out a law or master’s degree.

They generally don’t have the available time or money. And it is the uncommon law school student who wants to live according to the relentless schedule of a family farm. But farming on the ground is only one area of the food system. CAFS can provide valuable guidance, faculty expertise, and student assistance for farmers or value-added producers who are just starting. In addition to helping to create a food and agriculture certificate for the online Master’s in Environmental Law and Policy (MELP), CAFS is working with fellows and students to produce a range of basic legal docu-

of the requirements of the new Food “ Some Safety Modernization Act may crush small producers. The challenge now is to press for tweaks that don’t undermine the law’s intent.”

LAURIE RISTINO

as the Putnams, Huyffer and Ransom began by buying up second-hand equipment and building a creamery next to their milking parlor. Today the company is well known regionally for its glass-bottled organic milk and cream and delectable pints of smallbatch premium ice cream.

Both Putnam and Huyffer have

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ments and make them available online.

To pick one example: Access to arable land is one of the biggest challenges for would-be farmers, says Laurie Beyranevand ’03, CAFS’s associate director. Often creative leasing or long-term payment arrangements are farmers’ only options. CAFS plans to put together a suite of model land

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tenure tools that could save farmers time and money and educate them in the process.

In the same vein, most local farmers markets and multi-farm CSA programs operate without any kind of formal governance structure. That vacuum exposes the participants in the markets and CSA’s to unnecessary liability, Beyranevand says. CAFS wants to develop model documents for incorporation and governance that both types of partnerships could use as templates. For the vast majority of farmers and food producers, especially those without law degrees, such aids would certainly be useful, Putnam says.

Although the tapestry of a sustainable food system relies primarily on individuals who invest their time, money, and labor into farming and food production, it is increasingly clear that lawyers and advocates will be needed to keep the fabric strong.

“How you get there is one strand at a time,” Putnam says. “The more help you have the better it will be.”

Seeding Farm Policy olicymakers in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals around the country make decisions every session that affect small farmers and food producers for good or ill. Sustainable agriculture advocates who are trained in the law can help by proposing changes to legislation and acting as watchdogs when new laws and regulations are implemented.

Even laws approved with the best of intentions can lead to a host of unintended consequences. Such seems to be the case with the Food Safety Modernization Act. Signed by President Obama almost three years ago, the law is arguably the most sweeping reform to the federal government’s oversight of food production since the Progressive Era. The new statute empowers the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take a preventative rather than a reactive approach to the

contamination of fruits and vegetables by viruses and bacteria. It directs the agency to develop and enforce scientifically based standards for safe harvesting and processing. It also requires both growers and producers to develop more rigorous monitoring systems and response plans if contamination occurs.

For farmers especially, this means a new thicket of regulations. Previously, the FDA stayed out of the growing side of the equation. “This is the first time where we are seeing the FDA inserting itself in that part of the process,” Beyranevand says.

As written, the law contains specific provisions that exempt farms with less than $500,000 in sales from some of the more onerous, and expensive, requirements. But draft rules that the agency released last year threw that deal into question. The cost of complying with the proposed regulations could consume as much as half of a small farm’s thin profit margin.

As it stands, “some of its requirements may in fact crush small producers,” Ristino says. “The challenge now is to press for tweaks that don’t undermine the law’s intent.” For her, the central question is: “How do you have a safe system and still allow good things to happen?”

Students in one of Beyranevand’s courses wrote comments on the FDA rules, pointing out clarifications and changes that would lessen the burden on small farmers and producers. For example, a small, diversified farm may sell a variety of products that together equal more than $500,000. Currently, that farm wouldn’t qualify for the exemption even if the fruit and vegetable portion of their sales fell under the cut-off amount.

To pick another example that hits close to home in Vermont, the proposed FDA regulations set far more stringent limits on the use of manure and compost as fertilizers than what is allowed by the USDA, which creates a particular problem for organic farmers.

Beyond the new regulations, lawyers affiliated with CAFS are engaged in other forms of policy-oriented advocacy. Jamie Renner, CAFS’s clinical lead, is compiling all existing statelevel legislation that supports connecting farms and schools through both the classroom and the cafeteria. The goal is to create a compendium of the various sorts of policies, and analyze their impacts.

In a different vein, CAFS created a web site (foodlabelfacts.org) that introduced consumers to the meaning and legal basis for everything that ends up written on a food label. In particular, the site identifies the adjectives and phrases—such as “organic,” “low fat,” or “gluten free”—that are backed by consistent definitions and standards overseen by the USDA or monitored by third parties. It contrasts them with the descriptors—like “locally grown”— that are not defined or reviewed.

Renner and Beyranevand are in the process of expanding the website through a creative partnership with a national advocacy organization as well as developing other kinds of projects for students to pursue outside of the classroom.

Ristino believes that the law school’s leadership, in this historic moment, recognizes the opportunity to take a lead role in shaping the laws and facilitating the mechanisms that will allow a new kind of agriculture to flourish, one that is healthier for the community and the world. Food that is good for people, and good for the planet.

“The administration of Vermont Law has yet to discourage any of the ideas our staff has had,” says Ristino.

“There are not many institutions where you can have this much innovation so quickly. The only thing that limits us is our imaginations,” she adds. “And we have good imaginations.”

Growing a Legal Clinic After being hired last summer to lead the clinical component of Vermont Law School’s new Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, Jamie Renner got to fill in the details of his own job description.

The law clinic, slated to open in fall 2014, was just an idea until he came on board. His first task was to define what its students would do. For Renner, the job provides an uncommon opportunity to build an experiential program from the bottom up, with assistance from Center director Laurie Ristino. “Laurie and I joke about this being a start-up,” Renner says.

They decided first that the food law clinic would take on educational and advocacy-oriented projects, rather than try cases on behalf of individuals or organizations. Renner has already come up with several discrete efforts and is solidifying partnerships with international, national, and regional groups. Student efforts will have a wider impact when yoked to an existing, already effective, organization.

One project will include expanding upon an existing student initiative (foodlabelfacts.org) that explains in plain language what the words and phrases used frequently in food labels actually mean.

The bigger site would be developed and presented in conjunction with a national consumer advocacy group, Renner says.

Another concept taking shape is the development of educational resources on the ramifications of the new Food Safety Modernization Act for an association of state and local governments. Others include working with a regional aquarium to propose a standardized certification system for seafood and creating an anti-hunger campaign on behalf of an international aid group.

All of the projects will provide a different kind of experience than those found in more traditional legal clinic settings, says Renner. But the training in global thinking and problem solving will be valuable whatever students end up doing. “It’s a more holistic concept of advocacy that we think is good lawyering in any context,” he says.

—Kristen Fountain

Kristen Fountain is a Vermont based journalist.

She holds master’s degrees in earth science and journalism from Columbia University.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB BOSSI

ENTRePRENEURIAL

SPIRITS The local food movement is creating a crop of new jobs—some requiring not tractors or fertilizer, but the tools of the law. Could this lead to new career opportunities? A postcard from Vermont.

by Ben Hewitt

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hen Will Duane ’15 knocked on the door of Caledonia Spirits in the summer 2013, his expectations were pretty modest. “I figured I’d see if I could do some bottling, and maybe see if I could make a little extra money,” explains Duane, whose longtime interest in food and spirits had drawn him to the Hardwick, Vermont, distillery renowned for the use of raw honey in its award-winning Barr Hill Gin and Vodka. At the time, Duane was completing his internship at the Vermont Attorney General’s office, and he figured a little low-key liquor bottling was the ideal sideline.

For three weeks, Duane worked part-time at the distillery’s bottling station, filling and labeling bottles and then dipping the cork stoppers into hot wax. Across from him, he could see the gleaming stainless steel and copper vats, and the warm scent of honey and yeast hung in the air.

Cheers: Micro-distilled vodk a and gin from Caledonia Spirits.

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ENTRePRENEURIAL

SPIRITS All in all, it was not a bad gig—but it was about to get even better. “I wasn’t there very long before Todd [Hardie, the founder of Caledonia Spirits] told me about all the paperwork he had to do,” Duane recalls. “I said ‘Hey, maybe I can help you with that.’”

As it turned out, the process of producing and distributing craft spirits was guided by more than an elixir of art and science. That’s because the production and sale of alcohol—be it beer, wine, or liquor—is regulated by a morass of state and federal rules that could drive a would-be distiller to drink. Or to drink more, anyway.

“Most people have no idea what has to happen behind the scenes just to

the state capitol and 20 miles south of Hardwick. “There’s no way I could actually make the food—that’s just not who I am. But if I can help them navigate the legal landscape to accomplish their mission? That sounds pretty good to me.”

On a cold, clear day in late November, I walk through same door Duane did some six months prior. I’ve come to speak with Caledonia Spirits’ founder, Todd Hardie. I want to know more about the regulatory landscape—and the relationship between food entrepreneurs and lawyers—but I also want to better understand how the rapidly expanding craft spirits sector fits into the local food movement. In fact, Cale-

no way I could actually make the “ There’s food—that’s just not who I am. But if I can help Vermont food producers navigate the legal landscape to accomplish their mission?

That sounds pretty good to me.”

Will Duane '15

bring the product to market,” explains Duane. The paperwork Hardie showed him was incredibly complicated.

And it explains why Duane was pulled off the bottling station. He’s now using his legal training to help the small-but-growing distillery chart its course through the complex set of rules and regulations necessary to bring its products to market. In the process, he’s positioned himself at the forefront of the rapidly expanding niche of opportunity created by the juncture of the local food movement and the regulatory hurdles producers must leap. “I’ve always wanted to help the food producers in Vermont,” says Duane, 28, who grew up in East Montpelier, just a few minutes from

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donia Spirits’ hometown of Hardwick had recently gained national attention as something of a local foods mecca, with numerous small-scale producers popping up like dandelions in a June hayfield: vegetables, cheeses, seeds, meats, even soymilk and tofu. Over the past decade, Hardwick-area entrepreneurs had developed a symbiotic and collaborative food system that was the envy of communities across North America. How, exactly, did hard alcohol fit into that system?

I follow Hardie into his office, where a pitchfork leans jauntily against one wall. (“We tried raising pigs on the spent mash,” he tells me.

“It didn’t work so well, but we’re growing some great garlic out there now!”)

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On another wall, a stark reminder of the regulatory labyrinth that defines so much of how a craft distiller operates had been taped. It is a list of the 18 “Monopoly States” in which the distribution of spirits is controlled solely by the state, rather than by a regional or national distributor. “When Prohibition ended, the powers were shifted back to the states, and each state did something different,” Hardie tells me.

“It is highly, highly regulated. There are layers of permits required before we can even release a product.”

To Hardie, who at 60 bears the endearingly rumpled look of an English professor, the opportunity to contribute to Vermont’s working landscape and food-based economy is worth every bit of red tape. “This is what we are called to do,” he says. “We have a relationship with the bees and with the land, and these relationships allow us to do something really powerful, which is to provide good jobs that help families.” The business employs 15 part- and full-time workers.

The move to distilling with raw honey was a natural and obvious extension of Hardie’s love for bees, which began when he was twelve years old on his parents’ farm in Maryland and continued into his adult years, after his graduation from Cornell’s School of Agriculture. For decades, Hardie presided over Honey Gardens Apiary in nearby Ferrisburg, Vermont, where he sold raw honey and other honey-based products. To Hardie, raw honey is more than a simple food product. “We could never heat the honey, because raw honey isn’t just a sweetener. It’s medicine.”

But the purely agricultural challenges of running an apiary eventually wore thin. Some years, he’d lose half his hives to pests or disease. He began to consider ways in which raw honey could be utilized that did not create such vulnerability. Then there was the fact that he came from a Scottish family that had been distilling whisky

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SPIRITS since 1857. Finally, Hardie came to see that he could have a greater positive impact on the lives of his fellow Vermonters if he shifted his love of agriculture from producing honey to turning it into liquor.

“I live on a hill farm that 40 years ago was home to 30 cows, and someone was milking those 30 cows and making a living from them. You could never do that now if you were just selling milk. But that’s what the artisan cheese movement is doing; it’s making it possible to make a living from 30 cows again. Craft distilling is doing the same thing.”

In large part, that’s because Caledonia Spirits is committed to sourcing its raw ingredients locally. In fact, the day before we met, Hardie had just arranged a large purchase of organic corn from Butterworks Farm in Westfield, Vermont, less than an hour’s drive to the north. In 2014, the distiller will begin contracting local farmers to produce barley and rye. “What we’re seeing in Vermont is that distilling is helping grain growers,” Hardie says.

“We’re creating these relationships, we’re creating all these connections, and it’s touching a lot of lives. Nature is beautiful. Farming is beautiful.

But behind all that beautiful curtain, there’s a lot of hard work.” A surprising amount of the farm work is done with legal tools.

P

ete Colman would agree with the sentiment. Colman is the founder of Vermont Salumi, a small-scale food producer tucked into the corner of a renovated barn on a dead-end road in Will Duane’s hometown of East Montpelier. Like Caledonia Spirits, Colman’s business is rooted in one of the most highly regulated food industries in the nation: meat. Adding a layer of complexity, Vermont Salumi produces dry-cured and fermented sausages such as salami and other charcuterie.

“Most people told me that I wouldn’t even be able to make cured

meat in Vermont,” Colman tells me, when I reach him on his cell phone, “because of the regulations.” He’s on his way to speak with a local spice maker about a potential collaboration—yet another example of a healthy and symbiotic local food system. “So many of my decisions around what product to make and how to make it are defined by law. Honestly, it’s the big skeleton in the closet. It’s overwhelming sometimes.”

It took Colman nearly three years to unravel the tangled web of state and federal regulations that stood between him and a finished product (he was able to produce fresh sausage in the meantime). Even something as simple as his labels came attached to a laundry list of requirements regarding font size, white space, and placement.

And often, it felt to Colman as if he were educating the regulators, rather than the other way around. “It’s really interesting working with an agency that regulates an industry but doesn’t actually understand your business.

What I really need is someone who understands how my business works and also knows how the law works.

Understanding how those two aspects relate in a way that works for everyone is critical.”

Pete Colman didn’t have a Will Duane to help him maneuver through the regulatory terrain standing between him and a viable business.

“I don’t have a lawyer, but I should probably get one,” he told me. Then he sighed. “But I don’t think there are any lawyers in this field.”

The employment niche that businesses like Caledonia Spirits and Vermont Salumi have created is likely to only expand as the local food movement continues to gain traction across the country. “The growth and interest is phenomenal,” says Professor Laurie Ristino, director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at VLS. “The great challenge of the new food movement is figuring out how to apply

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legal tools to sustainable agriculture.

There is so much opportunity.”

Better yet: for law schools such as Vermont Law School, the intersection of the local food movement and the multitude of legal challenges the movement embodies creates a growing opportunity for legal experts to apply their skills in a manner that aligns with their social, environmental, and entrepreneurial ethos. “I’ve really caught the entrepreneurial bug working at Caledonia Spirits,” says Will Duane. “But it’s not just entrepreneurialism for profit; it’s entrepreneurialism with a social mission. I want to see that my actions are benefiting the people of my community.”

Of course, it can sometimes be difficult to maintain that view when you’re finding your way through the bewildering maze of rules set by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). The TTB grants the license that every distiller needs to practice his craft, and then demands documentation of every step of the distilling process. To ensure that it isn’t cheated out of a single penny of the excise tax due on alcohol, the federal government requires that distillers account for every drop. “There’s a lot of sifting through red tape,” Duane acknowledges. “It can get frustrating.”

But as Todd Hardie has learned, that occasional frustration is a necessary part of serving a larger purpose.

“The legal skills that Duane brings to Caledonia are really important,” he says. “And they complement what’s equally important, which is a desire to serve a company and take care of Vermont and her people. That’s what really matters. That’s our real product.

The rest of it, the bees, the honey, the distilling, is just how we get there.”

Ben Hewitt is the author of The Town That Food Saved, an exploration of Hardwick, Vermont, and the “agripreneurs” who transformed a local economy. He lives with his wife and sons on a 40-acre diversified hill farm in Cabot, Vermont.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB BOSSI Connected: Scott Cullen ’97, executive director of Grace Communications Foundation, immerses himself in the real world near his home on Long Isl and before starting his work day in New York City.

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da. n e g a th e d n a , table e h t s set p l e h tion a d n u e fo v a w w

By Jim Collins A ne

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n May 2011, an extraordinary range of experts and advocates gathered at Georgetown University to discuss the future of food. Journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and a prominent critic of industrial agriculture, gave the opening remarks. Among other panelists and speakers that day were CEOs of organic food companies; the senior technology officer from General Mills; the president of The Land Institute; FDA’s deputy commissioner for food; the outreach director for the National Farm to School Network; a vice-president from the Grocery Manufacturers Association; food writers and editors; Senator Jon Tester (D-MT); poet and farmer Wendell Berry; restaurant owners; environmental academics; and Sam Kass, the White House chef. Prince Charles, fresh off the international feeding frenzy surrounding his son’s royal wedding, gave the 40-minute keynote address, sounding an alarm on the depletion of the earth’s soils and the overtaxing of its water, on what has become an untenable global food system at the mercy of the unstable price of oil. Then he laid out a coherent alternative vision for the future.

The Washington Post, the main sponsor of the conference, gave the event prominence in its paper and on its web site, and its name was attached to the flurry of national media attention that followed. Less prominent was the behind-the-scenes co-sponsor, the GRACE Communications Foundation.

GRACE, a philanthropic foundation dedicated to raising public awareness of the relationship between food, water, and energy systems, provided support for the conference with its savvy media and communications expertise.

Among those attending the conference was Laurie David, an environmentalist and author who had been so motivated by a slide show on climate change by Al Gore that she’d approached Gore afterward, and ultimately produced the award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. At Georgetown, she was similarly moved by the Prince of Wales—and ended up finding a publisher willing to spread the message to a wider audience through a slim, elegant book called The Prince’s Speech: On the Future of Food. Partnering with Laurie David and Rodale (and creating the web site and media support),

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GRACE Communications helped lead the effort to market and promote the book’s important messages.

GRACE’s executive director, Scott Cullen ’97, a lifelong surfer who caught a particular brand of “all-in” mindset while a student at Vermont Law School, plays a key role in scores of similar collaborations for GRACE. He’s responsible for initiating and cultivating relationships throughout the nonprofit, corporate, and publicsector worlds, especially in arenas where philanthropy and public policy touch the overlapping spheres of food, water, and energy. Precisely because the seemingly intractable problems of a healthy environment are complex and interrelated, Cullen’s extensive network and knowledge of the issues have positioned him to recognize potential synergies, leverage points, and unexpected matches that aren’t obvious on their face. He knows how to read the waves. He has a talent for making an ambitious idea seem possible, and mobilizing people behind it—and then providing the programming or financial support (often both) to help them put the idea into action.

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In that way, GRACE is unusual in the world of foundations. “We connect to movements in a way that is more impactful than traditional philanthropy,” he says.

Cullen credits part of his approach to the experience he had at a different kind of law school. A long-haired free spirit as a student, Cullen routinely grabbed time to hike up to Kent’s Ledge or get in a few snowboard runs between classes. He valued the direct contact with nature that grounded the concepts he was learning in the classroom. His professors and fellow students didn’t mind the sweaty, or muddy, or sometimes barefoot student who dashed in just as class was starting up—they valued intelligence and opinions more than appearance. He felt surrounded by expertise and passion, by people who looked past convention and acted according to their ideals. “What gets cultivated at Vermont Law School,” he says, “is the idea of taking risks—to do what you think is right even if it’s hard. I learned that from so many professors who had taken on Goliaths and won, who knew what it was like to be outgunned and under-resourced and have nothing but their creativity and intellect and nuanced understanding of the law.”

In his first job out of law school, Cullen had the opportunity to work for a start-up nonprofit. He wrote the incorporation papers, set up the accounting system, hired staff. “It was all new to me and incredibly challenging,” he recalls, “but VLS had given me the confidence and thought process, the critical thinking part that is broadly applicable to so many things. I wasn’t daunted.” He made a name for himself working on coastal and marine conservation issues with The Nature Conservancy, and helped

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB BOSSI Beach Boy: In 2013, Cullen received the Jeff and Genie Shields Prize from Vermont L aw School, awarded in part for his work on behalf of marine environments.

“ What gets cultivated at Vermont Law School is the idea of taking risks—to do what you think is right even if it’s hard.”

Scott Cullen ’97

a local advocacy group near his home on Long Island permanently close the Department of Energy’s leaking nuclear reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The GRACE Foundation became aware of the grassroots effort to shut down the Brookhaven reactor—and noticed Cullen’s effectiveness. The foundation hired him as an informal policy advisor, then brought him on staff as a senior policy advisor, then promoted him to executive director. In addition to his position at GRACE, Cullen serves as a director on the boards of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders Network, and is a member of Vermont Law School’s Environmental Advisory Board.

Cullen’s deep knowledge of philan-

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thropic organizations and individual donors puts him in a unique position to identify trends and opportunities.

To pick just one example: he’s getting to know donors who are growing impatient with the federal government’s slow response to climate change—and who might be encouraged to see a faster payback in supporting initiatives involving agriculture, a huge sector for carbon emissions. While he’s busy making those connections, GRACE is helping articulate messaging and sharpening the speaking points for nonprofits working on sustainable agriculture, to make sure they’re making a consistent, compelling connection between their work and the changing climate. In this and dozens of other ways behind the scenes, GRACE Communications Foundation

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is doing more than playing matchmaker (often with matching funds); it’s seeding wide swaths of an entire movement, and setting an agenda.

At the same time, GRACE continues to build on its history of innovative public outreach and education campaigns, sometimes under its own name, sometimes anonymously, and often under the names of partners.

GRACE is behind the award-winning animation “The Meatrix,” a kid-friendly series about factory farming styled loosely on The Matrix. It’s helped create web-based initiatives including the Ecocentric blog, the Eat Well Guide, and the Sustainable Table. It provides a user-friendly online calculator for estimating your water footprint.

Downloadable curriculum materials for grades K-4. Videos. White papers.

Accessible resources. All with public education in mind.

One particularly successful partnership has been a disarmingly simple campaign called “Meatless Mondays”— a catchy initiative to get Americans to eat a little less meat. Over the past several years the idea has flowed into the mainstream. Meatless Mondays have been endorsed by Paul McCartney and celebrity chef Mario Batali; they’ve been institutionalized in Oprah Winfrey’s cafeteria, in Toyota’s U.S. plants, and in countless restaurants and high schools and family dining rooms across the country. Cullen doesn’t have to point it out, but the ripple effect is implied: not only the thousands of meals consumed each week that no longer contain meat—but the thousands and tens of thousands

of minutes spent in conversation about the merits of the issue in the offices and committees and kitchens, and in the weekly conversations of the those who are reminded every time they sit down to eat on Monday.

Setting the table for a new, more sustainable kind of agriculture is just one side of the equation. The other part is getting people to come to the healthier table, and eat.

GRACE is working both sides of the table, and making a difference.

Amen to that.

Jim Collins is a freelance writer and editor. His fifteen-year-old daughter attends The Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, where the weekly cafeteria menu includes “Meatless Mondays.”

The Prince’s Speech This is the challenge facing us. We have to maintain a supply of healthy food at affordable prices when there is mounting pressure on nearly every element affecting the process. In some cases we are pushing nature’s life-support systems so far, they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them. Soils are being depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious, and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil.

Remember that when we talk about agriculture and food production, we are talking about a complex and interrelated system and it is simply not possible to single out just one objective, like maximizing production, without also ensuring that the system which delivers those increased yields meets society’s other needs. . . . These should include the maintenance of public health, the safeguarding of rural employment, the protection of the environment, and contributing to overall quality of life.

So we must not shy away from the big questions. Chiefly, how can we create a more sustainable approach to agriculture while recognizing those wider and important social and economic parameters—an approach that is capable of feeding the world with a global population rapidly heading for 9 billion? And can we do so amid so many competing demands on land, in an increasingly volatile climate and when levels of the planet’s biodiversity are under such threat or in serious decline?

As I see it, these pressures mean we haven’t much choice in the matter. We are going to have to take some very brave steps. We will have to develop much more sustainable, or durable forms of food production because the way we have done things up to now are no longer as viable as they once appeared to be.

—From “On the Future of Food,” HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales

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Across the state and around the globe, Vermont Law School grads are refining—and defining—The ingredients of a healthy diet.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY Benjamin C. Tankersley Michael Formica ’98, photographed on December 2, 2013, Westover Market Butcher Shop, Arlington, Virginia.

BIG BACON Michael Formica ’98

By Ian Aldrich

W

hile it’s become common in recent years to espouse the virtues of small, localized farming, Michael Formica isn’t one of the movement’s evangelists. As Chief Environmental Counsel for the National Pork Producers Council in Washington, D.C., he works at the center of a $15 billion a year industry that employs more than a million people. “I’m ‘Big Bacon,’” he says, with a laugh. When it comes to the bad rap that large-scale farming has taken over the last decade, however, Formica doesn’t kid around.

“There’s this vision of what a farm looks like, but nobody wants to do the work,” he says. “If we had 200 million Americans each with 10 acres it would be an inefficient way for the country to produce food. It would be an inefficient way for the country to operate.”

Size has its place, says Formica, when it comes to contending with environmental issues. Take something like manure. By focusing on nutrition and feed efficiency, the pork industry has made “dramatic” reductions in what it generates, even while the number of animals has essentially remained the same. “Across the board for the pork industry, in every environmental metric, we see pollution decreasing from farms because they have the capital and resources and expertise to make advancements,” he says.

At the heart of Formica’s work is the push and pull of government regulation. He’s in steady contact with cabinet officials, Congress, and federal agencies, most frequently the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA). Some days he’s helping to craft legislation, like the agricultural provisions in the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act; other days he’s firing up a response on behalf of the livestock sector to, say, the EPA’s renewable fuel standards. “[The government] is like a school yard bully, until you bloody them up a few times,” says Formica, who previously worked as the director of Environmental Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “They’re not going to pay you much respect. But when you force it to turn over a check and pay you a lot of money, your clients are really happy and the government starts to listen to you.”

It’s a job that requires Formica to boldly, quickly come up to speed on all areas of environmental law. He credits his training at Vermont Law School for his ability to do that. “The school taught me how to critically think and evaluate problems,” he says. “And the base level that I’ve got in any environmental issue is above and beyond anything other practitio-

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ners have who I run into. We’ll bring in these experts from big law firms and I’ll just sit there and scratch my head, thinking, You went to Harvard and you don’t know this?”

“ We’ll bring in these experts from big law firms and I’ll just sit there and scratch my head, thinking, You went to Harvard and you don’t know this?”

Michael Formica ’98

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ORGANIC Amy Huyffer ’00

By Kristen Fountain

I

n good weather it takes 22 minutes to drive from Rock Bottom Farm in Strafford to the Vermont Law School campus. Amy Huyffer, who co-owns and operates the farm and its Strafford Organic Creamery, knows the route well. She spent her final year at VLS commuting after a whirlwind romance changed the course of her career.

As a first-year law student Huyffer aspired to be a principled small-town lawyer like Atticus Finch. Instead, her days now begin with four a.m. milking,

JAMMIN’ Nancy and Walter Warner ’12

By Ian Aldrich

T

he local and craft food movement comes in many flavors—that’s a big part of its appeal. But almost all of the movement’s farmers, producers, and entrepreneurs share the first-hand knowledge of how hard it is to make a living selling carefully created food in small batches.

Nearly every morning, Walter Warner and his wife Nancy stumble out of bed around 7:30 a.m., fire up the coffeemaker, and get to work: emailing customers, labeling jars, contacting suppliers, processing orders. As the owners and sole employees of The Potlicker Kitchen, a Bethel, Vermontbased jelly maker, the Warners have

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arranging logistics for a dairy business, and caring for her children—four boys, ages six to thirteen.

The sharp turn came at South Royalton’s Crossroads Bar & Grill in November 1999. A cover band was playing when Huyffer and her moot court partner stepped out to celebrate the end of their trial. She teased her first dance partner, saying she thought she had heard that the boys from Strafford had better skills. “He said, ‘You want Earl,’ and brought him over,” Huyffer recalls. That spring, Huyffer was married to South Strafford native, Earl Ransom.

Ransom’s goal was to revive his family’s dairy farm. To do that, the couple gambled on organic certification and the ability to process and sell their own milk.

A dozen years later, Strafford Organic Creamery employs eight local people outside the family. The farm

supports 60 cows that rotate through 145 acres of pasture over the course of a year, producing around 1,750 gallons of milk per week. A portion of the milk is turned into pints of premium ice cream. Recently, any extra production has gone to Vermont Farmstead Cheese in nearby Woodstock, to become a parmesan cheese that is still aging and has yet to hit the market. In such an uncertain line of work, Huyffer and Ransom, the lawyer and the farmer, continually look for efficiencies, higher margins, new markets. And they keep dancing.

Yes, the volume is small compared to most commercial herds. But their cows are content and the results are delicious. “You can’t do this on a bigger scale and have it be as good,” Huyffer says.

become used to the varied demands of a start-up enterprise. After several hours of paperwork and phone calls, it’s off to Waterbury Center, 45 miles away, where the couple rents a commercial kitchen, to cook and jar their jellies. Then, maybe around 10 p.m., it’s back home to prepare more labels and shipments. Typically, they don’t get to sleep until 1:30 a.m. “Long days,” says Walter. “If we just do 12 hours, it’s been an easy one.”

Potlicker’s story begins in the fall of 2011, when Nancy, home alone while Walter had an externship in Washington, D.C., fretted about running out of fruit for the winter. She started canning—“It was an addiction,” she says—and quickly latched on to jelly making. She experimented with unusual flavors made from the beer of Vermont microbreweries and wines such as burgundy and chablis.

By the holidays, creations were gaining attention at different fairs; the following summer Potlicker jellies hit farmers markets and stores in central Vermont. Today, the company is a

full-time job for the Warners, and their jellies are sold online and in stores across 13 states, with 3,000 jars of the stuff shipped from the couple’s home each month.

The company’s success has been expedited by Walter’s legal education.

His work for the new business has run the gamut, from setting up the Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) to weeding through Vermont’s Department of Health regulations to sorting out the trademark registration process.

A Food Regulation and Policy course he took at VLS helped him navigate the specific and sometimes obscure federal regulations for labeling. “We’ve definitely saved ourselves a few thousand dollars in legal fees,” Walter says.

In a portion of the food economy famous for its wafer-thin profit margins, those thousands of dollars make a difference. But there’s a deeper difference the legal training makes: it has to do with self-sufficiency; with personally understanding the laws that govern your business and your livelihood.

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FOOD FIGHTER Paige Tomaselli ’04

By Jamie Renner

F

rom her office in San Francisco, the Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), Paige Tomaselli, lives to fight “factory farms.” Her mission: to protect animals, the environment, and the public health from the practices which these farms routinely employ.

Indeed, Tomaselli and her D.C.-based organization have multiple cases pending in federal and state courts. As plaintiffs, CFS has sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking access to records regarding controversial animal growth drugs; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for withdrawing a proposal that would have allowed the agency to collect information, including numbers of animals, from so-called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs); and the state of Texas, for allegedly failing to enforce sanitation requirements against large egg producers. As defendant-interveners, the Center for Food Safety has sought to uphold limits on CAFO pollution under the Clean Water Act. Why target factory farms? Tomaselli cites animal welfare violations, environmental hazards, and worker abuse. “Most people don’t understand the gravity of the issues,” she says.

“Unless you search for the information, you won’t see it. It’s not in the news, not in your face. If more people knew, they wouldn’t necessarily not eat meat, but they’d choose more carefully what they did eat.”

Tomaselli first studied factory farming at Humboldt State University, where, as a philosophy major, she took courses in Environmental Ethics, the Ethics of Genetic Engineering, and Animal Ethics. “CAFOs brought me into this world. I was appalled by

conditions at factory farms,” she says.

After asking a professor and mentor, Susan Armstrong, how to make a difference, Tomaselli was encouraged to go to law school and then work as a non-profit advocate.

At Vermont Law, Tomaselli studied animal law and environmental law, participated in the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, served as President of the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, and published a “Detailed Discussion of International Comparative Animal Cruelty Laws.”

She focused on animal welfare and the environmental implications of agribusiness.

After VLS, she worked for two years as a staff attorney at Sher Leff in San Franciso, representing public water suppliers and public agencies seeking remediation from petrochemical corporations for groundwater contamination. In 2008, she joined the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization “working to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture.” The center offered Tomaselli the opportunity to re-focus on the issue that had moved her to attend law school in the first place.

“Historically, it’s been hard to find ways to challenge them,” according to Tomaselli. In her view, “powerful lobbying, government subsidies, weak regulatory enforcement, and the prevelance of confidential business information” inhibit reform. But she is already winning her battles. In October 2013, CFS and eight other U.S. food safety, agriculture, public health,

29

and environmental groups, compelled the FDA to withdraw its approval for three of four arsenic-based animal feed additives and 98 of 101 associated arsenic-based animal drugs. According to the center, despite being deleterious to the public health, “arsenic is added to poultry feed for the purposes of inducing faster weight gain on less feed, and creating the perceived appearance of a healthy color in meat from chickens, turkeys, and hogs.”

She is not stopping to celebrate.

The way Tomaselli sees it, the FDA withdrew only 98 of its 101 prior approvals. “Now,” she says, in addition to her expanding caseload, her work on the Board of the San Francisco Permaculture Guild, and her move to the East Bay (where she is busy creating a garden and habitats for ducks and bees), “I’m working to stop the other three approvals.”

“ Unless you search for the information, you won’t see it. It’s not in the news, not in your face. If more people knew, they wouldn’t necessarily not eat meat, but they’d choose more carefully what they did eat.”

Paige Tomaselli ’04

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Turning the Tide Meghan Jeans JD’02/MSEL’03

By Kristen Fountain

T

he Red Lobster restaurant chain and the New England Aquarium may not seem like the most natural of partners, but Meghan Jeans, director of the Boston-based aquarium’s Conservation Programs, is busy making this connection work. In this case, Darden Restaurants—the parent company of well-known restaurants such as Olive Garden, The Capitol Grille, Yard House, and Red Lobster—is committed to advancing seafood sustainability. In addition to leading the aquarium’s conservation policy efforts, Jeans marshals a diverse team of scientific and technical staff to help Darden and other major seafood-buying companies identify practical steps towards that goal.

Unsustainable fishing and aquaculture practices pose significant threats to environmental and human health worldwide. Companies that rely on those resources are feeling mounting pressure to address these threats in a more holistic and coordinated fashion.

Increasingly, corporate/NGO partnerships are becoming a key strategy for seafood-buying companies to mitigate risk and demonstrate good corporate citizenship. Meanwhile, conservation organizations like the New England Aquarium recognize that private-sector corporations can provide critical market and political leverage to influence positive changes on the water. Towards that end, the aquarium’s “Sustainable Seafood Program” partners with companies—including Darden, Gorton’s Seafood, The Fresh Market, and Ahold USA (the parent company of the Giant

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and Stop & Shop supermarket chains)— to help them become better stewards of the marine resources upon which their businesses depend.

The aquarium’s team of wild fisheries and aquaculture specialists handle a wide-range of activities, including conducting environmental risk assessments of their partners’ supply chains; providing procurement recommendations; developing educational materials for staff, suppliers and customers;

“ We recognize that improving ocean health and inspiring a sense of stewardship requires that we bring a diverse range of expertise to the table.”

Meghan Jeans JD’02/MSEL’03 and facilitating corporate support of key conservation initiatives. In addition, there is increasing public (and sometimes shareholder) expectation that companies will utilize both their buying power as well as their political muscle to drive change. The New England Aquarium facilitates corporate engagement on federal legislative and regulatory issues to strengthen fisheries management, deter illegal fish-

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ing, and improve seafood traceability.

They also help their partners engage in more discrete issues, particularly where there are direct threats to the sustainability of a company’s seafood supply. In this light, the U.S. seafood industry can be a global force for positive change—whether it’s opposing the proposed Pebble Mine project that threatens the commercial and ecological health of Alaska’s Bristol Bay or pushing for reforms in the harvest and labor practices in the Honduran spiny lobster fishery.

The aquarium’s fisheries program is also working with other advocacy and research groups on several complementary projects. NEA has partnered with the National Geographic Society and Conservation International, for example, to develop the world’s first comprehensive Ocean Health Index, “a sort of Dow Jones for the ocean,” Jeans notes. The index will describe how the policies of different countries are affecting marine health with a single number on a hundred-point scale.

The job involves “a little bit of everything,” says Jeans, who took the helm there in January 2012. Working at the intersection of law, policy, science, and business reflects the reality that sustainable food issues and their solutions will require a multi-disciplinary approach. “It definitely promotes ADD,” says Jeans, “but we recognize that improving ocean health and inspiring a sense of stewardship requires that we bring a diverse range of expertise to the table.”

© CI/photo by Keith L awrence Tuna fishing boat in Manta, Ecuador.

A special welcome to the Class of 2013!

The Vermont Law School Alumni Association (VLSAA) welcomes you to a group of over 6,000 VLS alumni— in all 50 states and in 30 countries around the world.

For information about the VLSAA, visit http://connect.vermontlaw.edu/VLSAA. Don’t forget! Log on to vlsConnect and update your alumni profile today. You don’t want to miss out on: · Networking, educational, and happy hour events in your area · Homecoming Weekend · Campus news and on-campus event invitations · Career Services announcements · Searching the online Alumni Directory · VLSAA election information · Class-specific news, class gift updates, and Class Notes requests · and of course, Loquitur!

http://connect.vermontlaw.edu LOQUITUR

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class notes

Notes from the Vermont Law School Alumni Association Congratulations to all my fellow VLSers—we are now the proud alumni of “a law school of a certain age.” The 2013/2014 academic year represents VLS’ 40th anniversary. As many of us know, hitting that milestone brings with it a certain amount of introspection and reflection.

Part of that process includes looking at where we have been: VLS has graduated over 6,500 advocates, awarding JDs, Masters, and LLMs to alumni who now live and work in all 50 states, and almost 30 countries. We have graduates impacting our communities and our world, doing a broad range of work: in federal, state, and local governments; in private industry; in law firms large and small; in consulting; in non-profits; in NGOs; in every sector, industry, and subject area you could think of. Our strength

lies, not just as Louis Pasteur said, in our tenacity, but most clearly in our incredible range of vision, geography and culture, and approach to problem solving.

Reflecting on where we have been also leads to reflection about where we should next head. As an institution, VLS continues to build on the diversity of its alumni, training the next generation of advocates and problem solvers.

We are taking education and scholarship to a higher level—examining the hard issues that confront our country and our world, from our broad and multi-disciplinary perspective.

One of the many issues VLS has committed to studying, food, is something many of us take for granted, something that is a struggle for others, and something intimately tied to almost every hot-button issue making headlines today. Having just finished the winter holiday season, we know

that food brings us together, and yet it also pulls us apart. The VLS Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) will work to bridge those divides, to draw on the diversity of our many alumni, particularly those working on food and agricultural issues, and to directly tackle the many interrelated environmental, social, regulatory, health, immigration, political, and cultural issues tied up in that simple concept of “food.”

I hope this issue of the Loquitur gives you plenty of food for thought.

1976

1977

1979

Mark Portnoy mhportnoy@gmail.com Sam Slaiby reports that on June 1, 2013, the Torrington, Connecticut office of Manasse, Slaiby & Leard, LLP relocated to 507 East Main Street, Suite 107, Torrington, CT 06790.

alumni@vermontlaw.edu

1978 Please email alumni@vermontlaw.edu if you are interested in serving as class secretary.

Sincerely, Karis L. North ’95 President, Vermont Law School Alumni Association knorth@mhtl.com http://connect.vermontlaw.edu/vlsaa

Deborah Bucknam dbucknam@vtlegalhelp.com

1980 Scott Cameron jscameron@zclpc.com Scott Cameron, Rick Mullaly, and Ray Obuchowski recently participated

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class notes

in a golf tournament at Hanover Country Club that raised approximately $25,000 for the Chris Raleigh ’80 & Travis Raleigh Memorial Fund at VLS. The tournament was organized by Kevin Raleigh in honor of his brother Chris and ten year old nephew Travis, who died in a tragic car accident in Vermont on January 12, 2012. The endowed Fund was established at VLS to honor the memories of Chris and Travis, and the surviving members of his immediate family, wife Anastasia and son Jimmy. The Fund, which is administered by the Dean of Students, provides monetary support to VLS students in times of need, crisis, or opportunity, whether personal or academic. To date we have raised approximately $35,000 toward the $50,000 goal.

Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus, which is the highest ranking. Fourth Degree members are the visible arm of the Knights of Columbus and frequently appear in parades wearing the black tuxedo, cape, chapeau, and sword.

1983 Martha Lyons malyonsesq@hotmail.com

Holly Dustin ’84 and Grady George ’00

1981 Tim McGrath mcgrath.timothy@dol.gov

1982 Larr Kelly photolarr@tidalwave.net Michele Kupersmith reports “Still in the Vermont House, fourth term. Vermont Legislature in session January to May but you wouldn’t know it by the volume of work most of us carry out off-session and the actual activity in the State House. Meanwhile, I am following the work of our Dean, Marc Mihaly, and am excited and proud! VLS is leading the way in changing how education is delivered and I say “thank you”! BTW, he cited Professor David Firestone as being a big player—I am not surprised! Hi to all!”

Ron Peles has recently become a

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ing in the Hanover/Norwich area. We enjoy working with them and getting to know them. I am thrilled to see how much progress VLS is making!”

Members of the Cl ass of 1983 at their thirtieth reunion.

1984

Leslie Nielsen embarked on a hiking tour this summer through Zion National Park with Jennifer Diffley ’15, Kathy Hassey ’84, and Laura Rehfeldt.

They were prepared for extreme heat, but ran into record monsoon rains, lightning, and incredible scenery. During the summer, Jennifer worked with Leslie and Laura at the Clark County, Nevada, District Attorney’s Office in the Civil Division. Jennifer is back in South Royalton for her second year at VLS. Kathy still lives in South Royalton and occasionally visits Leslie for skiing and backpacking trips in Utah.

Please email alumni@vermontlaw.edu if you are interested in serving as class secretary.

Holly Dustin and Grady George ’00 are Senior Financial Advisors at Ledyard Financial Advisors, with offices in Hanover and New London, New Hampshire. They advise clients about how to manage their wealth and about the tax-efficient transferring of assets in connection with estate planning and philanthropic giving. In addition they work with clients on financial planning and retirement planning. “It is fun work” notes Dustin, who lives in Brookfield, Vermont. George, who lives in Royalton, Vermont with his wife and four children, observes: “It is great to see so many VLS graduates practic-

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Leslie Nielsen ’84, Jennifer Diffley ’15, K athy Hassey ’84, and Laura Rehfeldt in Zion National Park

class notes

1985

1988

Please email alumni@vermontlaw.edu if you are interested in serving as class secretary.

alumni@vermontlaw.edu

Frank Twohill recently won his eleventh election to the Branford, Connecticut, Representative Town Meeting; this is the legislative body for the town. Frank has served on the body for 21 years, and he will chair the $60 million Education Committee.

1986

1991 Peg Stolfa margaret.stolfa@gmail.com

Members of the Cl ass of 1988 at their twent y fif th reunion.

1987 Mark Ouellette mouellette01@gmail.com

1992 Margaret Olnek mlo@olneklaw.com

alumni@vermontlaw.edu Lynne Mitchell hosted Aimee Goddard ’15 for a legal internship this summer at New Hampshire Hospital (NHH) in Concord. Aimee worked on a variety of legal matters affecting NHH’s patients and successfully litigated a hearing, which ended just before she headed back to begin her second year at VLS. Lynne says “We enjoyed and appreciated Aimee’s contributions this summer and we are confident she will be successful in her future legal career.”

U.S. Small Business Administration, becoming the third-only attorney in Rhode Island to receive that qualification.

1989 alumni@vermontlaw.edu

1990 Mario Gallucci mgallucci@hnglaw.com James Cantlon and his wife Holly welcomed a daughter, Reardyn Joy Cantlon, into the world on October 22, 2010. He is still with the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C. and was promoted to Deputy Associate General Counsel for Labor and Employment Litigation in September.

Let him know if you are ever in D.C. to meet for dinner and drinks.

Mario Gallucci announces that his new television show, called “Partners in Crime,” is scheduled to air on the USA Network this spring. The show focuses on Mario’s criminal practice in New York.

Chris Rhodes recently earned the prestigious certification of Designated 504 Closing Attorney from the Office of the General Counsel for the

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Tom Basting is the co-chair of the litigation section at Briggs and Morgan, P.A. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He focuses his practice on defending major waste companies, utilities, railroads, manufacturers, and trucking companies in a “veritable smorgasbord” of claims. He is vice-chair of the Hennepin County Bar Association ethics committee responsible for investigating ethical complaints and recommending discipline for violations. Tom writes: “My son is a junior at the University of Minnesota and is majoring in biochemistry. He’s generally busy with lab work or on campus activities, but he usually stops by my house on Sundays to deplete my beer fridge and say hi.

My daughter is a junior in high school and just significantly increased my insurance rates by finally getting her driver’s license. As for me, I am getting remarried next March after a several year hiatus from the institution. My fiancé is a doctor of musical arts and a professional cellist with the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, so it’s fair to say that I’ve outkicked my coverage. Oh, and we are learning to play bridge (really). I occasionally run into Molly Hapgood, not literally yet, as she bikes and I run around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis.

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Tim ’90 and Kathryn ’91 Fetterly live in my neighborhood and we still get together for drinks, cards, and dinner (well, not always dinner).”

Dave Foley JD’92/MSL’93 reports that he and wife Heather are doing well.

They have two kids: Walt (15 years old) and Megan (12 years old). Dave successfully ran for reelection to a third term as Chautauqua County (New York) District Attorney this November. He recently had dinner with Chief Justice Roberts.

Dave Foley JD’92/MSEL’93 with Chief Justice John Roberts.

Leslie Fourton JD’92/MSL’93 just produced, played on, and released a new jazz/jazz fusion CD entitled ‘Out of Nowhere!’ that is getting good reviews.

It generally falls somewhere between post-bop, funk edged jazz, and R & B grandeur. His day job is with a team of twenty attorneys at Mayer Brown LLP in New York in Securities Litigation with a focus on Securitization.

Jeffrey Lee JD/MSL left his litigation partnership at GCA Law Partners in Silicon Valley in May to join his client Live365, Inc.—an internet radio network—as Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. He says he has had fun working with creative people in the music and technology industries. His wife Tilly just became the executive director of her transportation agency in San Francisco, and their boys, seven and four years old, are keeping them “crazy busy.” Life is good out in northern California.

Jessica Oski is now a lobbyist in Montpelier, Vermont with Sirotkin & Necrason and works with many VLS

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alumni every day. She says “I live with my 10 year old daughter in a great neighborhood in Burlington, a few doors away from Bob Behrens JD/ MSL’93 and his family. I’ve recently taken up Mah Jong and skydiving.

Spent a lovely evening in August on the shores of Lake Champlain visiting with Margaret Olnek and John Beiswenger JD/MSL.” Claire H. Prince MSL is Special Counsel with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Office of General Counsel (SCDHEC), working with the Brownfields, Hazardous Waste, and Underground Storage Tank programs. Prior to joining the Office of General Counsel, Claire was the Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Land and Waste Management at SCDHEC. After sending her youngest son off to college at the University of California, Los Angeles, Claire enjoyed an “empty nest” cruise on the Rhine River in October.

Tim Shea is a partner at Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman, LLP in Hauppauge, New York, specializing in Land Use and Real Estate. He has a wonderful wife, Danielle, and three little boys, Brady, Cassius, and Emmitt (ages 3, 2 and 1!).

In the past two years, Carole Wacey got married, bought a 1910 round house (“it’s a turret”) in Forest Hills (Queens, New York), and began a new position as Vice President of Education at WNET/ Thirteen (after running a nonprofit for the past 10 years). She hopes to hear from you if you are passing through NYC. Fred Zeytoonjian JD/MSL reports: “On my last work trip to California I met Alan Lewis ‘93 for coffee at the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco. I then drove to Reno, Nevada to hang out with Chris “Eddie” Lynch JD/MSL for the weekend. We lost money gambling, drank Wet Woodies, hiked up to a waterfall in the Mt. Rose Wilderness and ate some great food. Oh yeah, I also fell into Lake Tahoe.”

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Fred Zey toonjian and Chris Lynch (both JD/ MSL’92) hiking in the Mt. Rose Wilderness, Nevada.

1993 Lainey Schwartz geowoman3@aol.com

Members of the Cl ass of 1993 at their twentieth reunion.

Al an Strasser JD/MSL’93 submit ted this picture of the alumni-student ultimate frisbee game at Homecoming Weekend 2013. Pictured in the front row, from lef t: Mat t Iler ’93, Al an, and Patrick Kennedy ’93.

class notes

1994

alumni@vermontlaw.edu Walter French reports that after 17 years as a sole practitioner in Brattleboro, Vermont, his wife Jodi French has joined his practice. (Walter also reports that he got married a while back.) Jodi read onto the bar under Walter’s supervision (“Buy One, Get One!”) and practiced at Fisher & Fisher, also in Brattleboro, for five years before forming French & French with Walter. They will not need to change the F&F monogramming on the bling Jodi brought with her.

1995 Karen Moore kj.moore@judicial.state.co.us Peter Cooper married Pascal Maguin on August 20 in New York City. Peter is a partner at Cilenti & Cooper, PLLC, an employment law practice in New York.

Kevin Cruz has been with Gray Duffy, LLP in Encino, California since 2004. He specializes in business law, employment law, and insurance law.

Kevin recently obtained a $15 million judgment in a real estate trust matter.

1996 alumni@vermontlaw.edu Judith George JD/MSEL was just relocated by her employer, Caterpillar Inc., to the Chicago metropolitan area in November 2013. She’ll be handling commercial and corporate governance matters for a subsidiary, ElectroMotive Diesel. Her family is looking forward to returning to a large city.

Judith previously spent eleven years in Washington, D.C., where she met her husband, Nicholas, a D.C. native.

Caryn Waxman and fellow attorney Amber Barber announce the opening of Barber & Waxman Family Law Associates, PLC in Burlington, Vermont.

Caryn is a member of the Family Law Section of the Vermont Bar Association, and presents advanced trainings in family law matters to audiences around New England. She is a 2010 graduate of Leadership Champlain, and was selected for the Excellence in Executive Leadership (ExcEL) Class of 2012, both programs presented by the Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. She currently serves as a member and chair on the hearing panel of the Vermont Professional Responsibility Board. Caryn holds the uncommon distinction as a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and provides clients with comprehensive services for all family law matters.

1998 alumni@vermontlaw.edu

Members of the Cl ass of 1998 in the photobooth at their fif teenth reunion.

Nicole Paquette recently moved back to the Washington, D.C. area, and currently serves as the Vice President of Wildlife Protection for The Humane Society of the United States.

1999 Joy Kanwar-Nori joy.kanwar@brooklaw.edu Richard A. Levitt JD/MSEL is pleased to announce that he was recently named Associate Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations at Brandeis University.

Caryn Waxman ’96

1997

2000

Cheryl Deshaies davis4nh@comcast.net

alumni@vermontlaw.edu Kimberly Pastewski MSEL submits that she and her husband, Alex Pastewski ’02, moved from Vermont to Florida, as he has accepted a wonderful new job with the NBC TV Station in Tampa. Alex recently received the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) 2013 Wilma Rayta Volunteer of the Year Award for the CD for COTS: Harmonies for Humanity, Volume 1.

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2001 alumni@vermontlaw.edu

2002 Paige Bush-Scruggs paigescruggs@comcast.net Jennifer (Tomas) Van Wie JD’02/ MSEL’03 announces that on July 25, 2013, Cecilia Rose Van Wie arrived.

Cecilia joins brother Isaac (four and a half years old) and Abigail (three years old). Jennifer will have reached the 10-year mark as an Assistant Attorney General in the Illinois Attorney General’s Office Environmental Bureau in February 2014. The family resides in Third Lake, Illinois.

Resources where she successfully advocated enactment of regulations to historically expand oyster sanctuaries and restore blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay; legislation to deter fish and wildlife poaching, expand shellfish aquaculture, improve boating safety, and increase funding for fisheries management; and an Executive Order preparing Maryland for the impacts of climate change. She authored and negotiated the Forest Conservation Act of 2013, making Maryland the first state in the nation to enact a no-netloss of forest policy and a statewide tree canopy goal. Olivia recently met up with Cheryl Coiro MSEL and Molly Mimier JD/MSEL’05 in Washington, D.C., to wish Molly safe travels as she moves to Lima, Peru. Molly will begin her new career as an independent consultant for the United States Agency for International Development, after working as a Foreign Service Officer and Contracts Attorney for the U.S. State Department.

child, Jack; they are enjoying parenthood and enjoy taking pictures of Jack which will surely cause him great grief later in life. Susan is a Principal at the law firm of Wuestling & James, LC, in St. Louis, Missouri, where she focuses on complex litigation, insurance coverage, and legal malpractice defense.

Susan can be reached at dimond@ wuestlingandjames.com.

Jack Dimond, son of Susan (Schwartzkopf) Dimond ’04 and Anthony Dimond.

2003

2005

Shannon Bañaga vlsmaher@yahoo.com

Meg Munsey and Kelly Singer vermontlaw2005@gmail.com

2004 Spencer Hanes spencer.hanes@duke-energy.com

Members of the Class of 2003 at their tenth reunion.

Olivia Campbell Andersen MSEL now works for Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley as Senior Advisor to the Governor’s Chief of Staff. Prior to her new position in the Statehouse, she served as the Legislative Director for the Maryland Department of Natural

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Caroline Fisher still lives in Boston and is currently enjoying her ‘new’ role as the Director of Government Affairs for the New England region for Otsuka America Pharmaceutical. The focus of her work is on mental health policy and advocacy, which builds off of her work on health care reform initiatives in the Massachusetts state legislature. Best ‘bonus’ of the job....

Vermont is in her territory!

Susan Schwartzkopf married Anthony Dimond in October 2011 in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Her wedding was attended by VLS graduates Jen Paull JD’05/MSEL’06, David Rugh, and Paige Tomaselli. In December 2012, Susan and Tony welcomed their first

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On February 23, 2013, Steve Brown married Lauren Henry in Grafton, Vermont. VLS alumni David Singer ‘04, Kelly Smith Singer JD/MSEL, Meg Munsey, and Jamie Bush were in attendance. Steve and Lauren live in Brattleboro where he is a Deputy State’s Attorney for Windham County.

Jamie Bush ‘05, Meg Munsey ‘05, David Singer ‘04, and Kelly Smith Singer JD/MSEL’05 at Steve Brown ’05’s wedding to L auren Henry.

class notes

Penelope Sofia Diaz Curbelo, daughter of Carolina Curbelo ’05 and husband Jose E. Diaz.

Carolina Curbelo announces the birth of daughter Penelope Sofia Diaz Curbelo, who was born on September 23, 2013 at 9:21 a.m. to proud parents (Carolina and Jose E. Diaz) and big brother Manuel. She weighed eight pounds, 11 ounces. Currently, Carolina is a legal liaison for the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, where she’s worked since July 2012. She is also a board member on the Vermont Law School Alumni Alumni Association and cochairs the New York City and New Jersey alumni regional groups.

Dr. Betty Grizzle MSEL earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Research from the University of California, San Diego, in March 2013 while continuing to work at her current position with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Carlsbad Field Office) in San Diego County, California. She hopes to use this new degree to transition into a career in the health sciences field. The educational experience at VLS has been a distinct advantage in her current position at the Service and is expected to be just as valuable for a future career in clinical research.

Sheri Lawson has been living in Hawaii since 2005, and has been employed as Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the County of Hawaii for the last three years. Prior to that, she worked as a Deputy Public Defender for the State of Hawaii and clerked for Third Court Judge Elizabeth Strance on the Big Island for a few years. The weather

Vermont Law alumni happily reunited at the 21st Fall Conference of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources in Baltimore, Maryland in October. From left to right: (standing) Kyle Landis-Marinello MSEL’05, Hart Knight ’06, Rebecca Turner ’08, Tim Sullivan JD/MSEL’05, Michael Kondrla ’14; (SEATED) JENNY DRUST JD/MSEL’05, AMY MANZELLI JD’05/MSEL’07, AND MIKE MYERS ‘93. on the Big Island is very nice—very, very different from the freezing cold temps and snow in South Royalton.

2006

Derek Campbell JD’06/MSEL’07 and Quoc Nguyen JD/MSEL’08 were married on June 3, 2013 in a small ceremony with family in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park. Their daughter Iris Simone Nguyen Campbell, born in September 2012, was Quoc’s something blue.

Ashley Cottingham ashleybrey@gmail.com Ebony Riggins erriggins@gmail.com Ashley Carson Cottingham and her husband Carroll welcomed their son Chester Ross Cottingham into the world on April 5, 2013. They recently relocated from Washington, D.C. to Portland, Oregon where Ashley is now the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Compassion & Choices, an organization dedicated to improving care and expanding choice at the end of life.

Will Senning and Susan Baker Senning JD/MSEL’08 welcomed a healthy, happy, beautiful daughter on October 4, 2013, just six days after attending the VLS reunion. Stella Grace Esther Senning (“Stella Grace”) weighed a mighty five pounds, 13 ounces at birth, and the whole family is doing great. Will has served as the Director of Elections and Campaign

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Ashley Carson Cot tingham ’06, with son Chester Ross.

Stell a Grace, daughter of Will Senning ’06 and Susan Senning JD/MSEL’08.

Finance in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office since April 2013. Susan

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will return to her position as Planning and Zoning Administrator for the Town of Waitsfield after her maternity leave ends in January 2014. They live off of Camel’s Hump Road in Duxbury.

2007 Greg Dorrington gregdorrington@gmail.com Liz Lucente liz.lucente@gmail.com Shannon JD/MSEL and Joe Griffo welcomed their first child, Emerson Chase, to the world on August 19.

Shannon is now at Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Joe is still stationed at the Pentagon, working for the Department of the Navy.

Chris King JD’07/MSEL’08 at his wedding. Tim Duggan JD/MSEL’07 and Chris Miller JD/MSEL’07 are among his groomsmen.

K ate Burton L amson ’07 and Susan Keane McManus ’07, hard at work at the Bennington Count y, Vermont, Office of the Public Defender.

Arlo Gregory Schwarting, newborn son of Liz Lucente JD/MSEL’07. She writes that “He came out swinging!”

CLA litigation at Hunsucker Goodstein PC in Lafayette, California.

Caroline Keefe JD/MSEL and husband Luis belatedly announce the arrival of their son, Luke Lourenço

Shannon JD/MSEL’07 and Joe JD’07 Griffo’s son, Emerson Chase.

Maureen (Bayer) Hodson JD/ MSEL and her husband David are overjoyed to announce the birth of their son Ryan Timothy, born October 22 at home. Ryan joins his two year old sister, Lily. Maureen practices CER-

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Charlot te Catherine, daughter of Jessica Olson ’07.

Luke, son of Caroline Keefe JD/MSEL’07.

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Teixeira, on July 26, 2012. Luke is now a rambunctious one year old who loves books, Cheerios, exploring the outdoors, and getting dirty.

Chris King JD’07/MSEL’08 has quite a bit to report since his last bitter

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update of yore. Most excitingly, he was married in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 25th. For those cats reading this who were there, thanks again for making it! He tied the knot with Carol DeMarco of Kinnelon, New Jersey. The two first met at the VLS Solutions Conference and visiting students’ weekend in 2004, but the timing was not yet right.

He is also pleased to report that the job front finally came together. Just after the wedding, he began working for the Office of the Solicitor, Division of Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior in Washington D.C. He and his wife, an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, have settled in nicely on Capitol Hill, shutdown notwithstanding.

A pretty good year for Mr. King indeed.

Kate Burton Lamson and Susan Keane McManus are happy to report they are now working together as staff attorneys at the Bennington County, Vermont Office of the Public Defender. Together they proudly fight the government. Kate and her husband, John Lamson ’06, are also the proud parents of an adorable little girl, Penelope. Susan and her husband, Dan McManus ’01 are the proud parents of three dogs and Dan’s two children.

Liz Lucente JD/MSEL reports that she and Kyle Schwarting just had their first child, Arlo Gregory Schwarting, on October 28. They are all happy and healthy, and the poodles can’t wait to meet him.

Melissa Mullarkey JD’07/MSEL’04 welcomed her second daughter Vivian (much adored by older sister Stella) in March. Melissa works for Recycled Energy Development, which recently acquired the utilities business from Kodak in Rochester, Illinois. She says the transaction is filled with interesting environmental law issues.

Jessica (Biamonte) Olson and husband Jodin Olson welcomed Charlotte Catherine Olson on July 5, 2013.

She entered the world weighing five pounds, 10 ounces. Big brothers, Alex (14 years old) and Brooks (two years

old), are smitten and can’t wait until she can throw a ball with them.

Maggie Stubbs JD/MSEL writes “On September 20, 2013, I married Jonathan Doran. We were married in the Charles County Circuit Courthouse courtyard in La Plata, Maryland by the judge I clerked for right after graduation. We threw a ‘post-married’ party on October 5th in my parent’s Gambrills, Maryland yard. Other VLSers in attendance were Kayla (Smith) Anderson JD/MSEL, Vic Aufiero JD/ MSEL ’08, Samantha ’08 and Max ’08 Beaulieu, Shannon (Vallance) Griffo JD/MSEL, and Christina (“Dallas”) Switzer ’08. My dog Sampson, a regular at VLS rugby games and around South Royalton, was present for both the wedding and the party. Jon grew up in Colchester, Vermont on a camp on the banks of Lake Champlain. Jon and I also bought a home together in May 2013 in Newington, Virginia. We continue to foster bully breed dogs for Mid Atlantic Bully Buddies, and collected donations for the group for our wedding.

Johanna and Rory Thibault are excited to announce the arrival of their second little boy, Cody Stephen Thibault, last May. They also adopted a military working dog—named Lando— earlier this year, and he has been an incredible addition to the family. The Army still has the Thibaults living in Bavaria where Rory left the Trial Defense world and is now a Senior Trial Counsel for European Forces in Bavaria. Johanna recently became a VLS student again and is earning her LLM in Environmental Law through the Distance Learning program. When they aren’t working or drinking good German beer, they are traveling as much as possible throughout Europe, and enjoying every minute of it.

Johanna ’07 and Rory ’07 Thibault, with sons River and Cody.

On September 2012, Bill White and Laura Malaga-Dieguez welcomed into the world their daughter, Ana. She is happy and healthy, and when beset by sleeplessness, Dad can ease her into a profound restful slumber with a few stories about work. Bill is an associate at Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, LLP, and Laura is a Pediatric Nephrologist at New York University Langone Medical Center. They are always happy to catch up with members of the VLS alumni community visiting New York.

Rebecca and Steven Whitley welcomed Jackson Garland Whitley into the world on September 15, 2013, Maggie Stubbs JD/MSEl’07 and new husband and recently moved from Concord to Jonathan Doran.

Hopkinton, New Hampshire, along with their yellow lab, Bodie. Steven

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class notes

Bill White ’07 and daughter Ana.

Alison Share and Jami Westerhold JD/MSEL tied the knot June 1, 2013 on the shores of Lake Champlain in beautiful Vergennes, Vermont.

The day had lawn-game weather, an all-vegetarian menu, and Baily the ring master dog. It was a success all around. VLS was well represented with Professor Jackie Gardina as the officiant along with Board member Judge Peter Hall and numerous VLSers in attendance.

practices municipal law at Mitchell Municipal Group in Laconia, New Hampshire and Rebecca is still practicing at the Disabilities Rights Center in Concord. “Life is good!”

2008 Samantha Santiago Beaulieu samantha.c.beaulieu@gmail.com Jamie Williams willjamie@gmail.com

Members of the Class of 2008 at their fif th reunion.

Lauren Isaacoff JD/MSEL was recently married to Lee Raichlen and after a 10-month federal clerkship with the Honorable Cathy L. Waldor, U.S.M.J. in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, Lauren has returned to Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, P.C., where she has worked as an associate in the Litigation Section since graduation.

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At the June wedding of Alison Share ’08 and Jamie Westerhold JD/MSEL’08. Back Row: Laura Furrey ’08, Professor Rebecca Purdom JD/ MSEL’96, Betsy Catlin ’08, Sarah Cogan ’08, Samantha Santiago Beaulieu ’08, Andrea Steiling ’08, Professor Jackie Gardina, Megan Schaeffer MELP’08, K ara Miller, Brit ta Hinrichsen ’07. Front Row: Anna Wildeman ’07, Christina Switzer ’08, Maggie (Stubbs) Doran JD/MSEL’07, Alison, Jami, Becky Turner ‘08, and Max Beaulieu ‘08. Meghan Cl ark O’Neill ’08 was in attendance, but not pictured.

2009

John Miller johndmillerjr@gmail.com Timothy Connolly has joined the firm Preti Flahery as an Associate with the firm’s Litigation Group. He practices in the firm’s Portland, Maine office where he focuses on a wide range of matters, including commercial litigation, insurance litigation, and professional liability.

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Tim Connolly ’09

In early 2013, Geoffrey Sewake JD/ MELP and his wife left Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York to travel throughout Southeast Asia for three and a half months. Upon returning state-side, they moved to Vermont. They are currently living in St. Johnsbury. Geoffrey is a Regional Planner at the North Country Council, the regional planning commission for the North Country region of New Hampshire.

2010 Cara Cookson ccookson@langrock.com Laurie Wheelock lauriewheelock@gmail.com Brent Bohan JD’10/MSEL’07 was elected to the King County (Washington) Bar Association’s Young Lawyer’s Division’s Board of Trustees in May. He was recently a speaker at the swearing-in ceremony for over 300 newly licensed attorneys. He also sold his practice and now works for a litigation firm in downtown Seattle.

Allison Buckley MELP and Eric Gentino ’12 were married in August in Keene, New York. They now live in Ballston Spa, New York. Eric is a construction law lawyer in Saratoga and Allison works for the New York Depart-

class notes

with a companion study guide titled “How Does the Constitution Keep Up with the Times? Twelve Lessons on the Nation’s Founding Document and Its Application in 21st Century.”

Genesis Miller JD/MELP says “Chuck and I welcomed Thayne Ever Miller Weed into the world on July 24, 2013.”

Alison Buckley MELP’10 and Eric Gentino ’12 on their wedding day. ment of Environmental Conservation as a Natural Resources Planner.

An article that Michael Cole wrote as an Independent Research Project under the supervision of Professor Jackie Gardina his 3L year in 2009 and published in 2011, A Blueprint for EPA: How the Agency Can Overcome the Statute of Limitations when Enforcing PSD Under the Clean Air Act, 31 Utah Env. L. Rev. 182, was cited by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the opinion United States v. EME Homer City Generation, L.P., 727 F.3d 274, 291 (3d Cir. 2013). He has another article published in Florida State University’s Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, and has recently accepted an offer to publish a third article in Resolved: Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution at Charleston School of Law. After leaving VLS, Michael obtained an LLM in Environmental Law at The George Washington University Law School, and he currently works as an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of Administrative Law Judges for the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.

Jeffrey Heinrick writes “Tracey Mackenzie Heinrick and I just celebrated two years of wedded bliss. I work for the Pinal County Public Defender’s Office. Tracey is an attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, working in the Child Welfare Division. Tracey and I recently added a new member to our family: Sterling the Greyhound. He is two years old

Sterling Heinrick, Jeffrey Heinrick ’10’s newest family member. and loves to snuggle with Tracey. Kira Bryers came up with the name. All is well here in Arizona and we miss our fellow classmates.”

Dianne Kearns Duncan recently concluded her tenure as Leadership Group chair of Constitutionally Speaking. The yearlong pilot project aimed to encourage spirited, yet civil, dialogue on constitutional issues and to galvanize support for the reintroduction of meaningful civics education in New Hampshire schools. Institutional partners in the effort included the New Hampshire Supreme Court Society, of which Dianne is a trustee, the University of New Hampshire School of Law, and the New Hampshire Humanities Council. The project kicked off in September 2012 with a public conversation between retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and PBS Newswoman Margaret Warner. Its final public event was a joint appearance in May 2013 by renowned litigators David Boies and Ted Olson. Educational materials generated by the project include video clips

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Thayne, son of Genesis Miller JD/MELP’10, was born July 24, 2013.

Laurie Wheelock JD’10/MSEL’07 and her husband Jim Maximowicz welcomed a baby boy named Riley Aaron James Maximowicz into the world on March 15, 2013. The family resides in Brooklyn.

2011 Amanda George-Wheaton amanda.georgewheaton@yahoo.com Sarah McGuire sarag.mcguire18@gmail.com After traveling to Alaska and working as a contract attorney for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound with Perkins Coie LLP, Lisa Campion JD/ MELP returned to Vermont in August of 2012. Lisa worked as a Law Clerk with Martin & Associates in Barre, Vermont. After passing the Vermont Bar, Lisa became Martin & Associates’ newest Associate Attorney. Lisa works

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class notes

Alumni at the wedding of Ashley Romeo-Boles ’12 included T yler Corn JD/MELP’12, Erica Lewis ’12, Tracey Ullom JD’12/MELP’13, Susan Let tis ’12 (shown); and Sean Williams ’10 and Janice Chan JD’11/MELP’10 (not pictured).

At the wedding of Clare Cragan JD/MELP’11 and John Bernetich JD/MELP’11. From lef t to right are: (back row) Sergio Botifoll ’11, Darin Schroeder ’09, Nate Rectanus ’11, Big Al Weisheit JD/MELP’11, Benji Borowski JD/MELP’11, Amanda Dumville ’13, Jim E. Abraham JD/MELP’11, Adam Dumville JD/ MELP’11, Kevin Siqveland JD/MELP’11; (middle row) L aura Ethington ’12, Adam Granade, Reade Wilson ’11, Pete Vetere ’11, Meg Casey JD/MELP’11, L aurie Stern JD/MELP’11, Ashley (Hintz) DeVerna JD/MELP’11, Molly Watson JD/MELP’11; (front row) E.P. Hutchens ’11, Jim DeVerna’09, Brian Selogie JD/MELP’11, the bride, Gray Jernigan JD/MELP’11, the groom, Mark Foster ’11, and Ben Leoni ’11. on a variety of general practice matters in Central Vermont. She’s living in Montpelier with her Irish Setter, Rock, and still loving the outdoors.

Clare Cragan JD/MELP and John Bernetich JD/MELP celebrated their marriage on August 31 in Richmond, Vermont with plenty of VLSers in attendance. A rousing reception followed. Music was supplied by E.P. Hutchens ’11 (banjo), Gray Jernigan JD/MELP’11 (guitar), and Adam Granade (upright bass).

2012 Susan Lettis susanlettis@gmail.com Lauren Miller lauren.miller.e@gmail.com Ricky Armand and Melissa PierreLouis Armand were married in Charlotte, North Carolina on Saturday, October 6th, 2012. Fellow VLS graduates Kendra Brown, Caroline Morant,

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mouth College, Rachel has settled into practice at the firm of DeBonis, Wright & Carris, P.C. in Poultney, Vermont.

Brent Noyes JD/MELP and Jacqueline Noyes JD/MELP got married in September of 2012. They are now living in Maine.

Caroline Morant ’12 (far lef t) and Kendra Brown ’12 (far right) at tended the wedding of Ricky Armand ’12 and Melissa Pierre-Louis Armand. Not shown is Dal ayna Tillman ’12, also present.

and Dalayna Tillman, were present for the ceremony.

Becky Fu LLM was nominated as one of the 2013 Rising Stars by Vermont Business Magazine.

Rachel Margulies JD/MELP became licensed to practice law in Vermont in November of 2012 and in New York in October of 2013. After spending the year following graduation traveling as an admissions counselor for VLS and working as the pre-law advisor at Dart-

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Brent and Jacqueline Noyes (both JD/MELP’12) at their September 2012 wedding.

On October 26, 2013, Elle Stenerson and Ethan Pressly tied the knot in Oak Brook, Illinois. Elle and Ethan were joined by many friends and fellow alumni from the VLS community.

Many fond memories of VLS were shared throughout the weekend, and they wish everyone the best in life.

Currently, they are enjoying their lives in Springfield, Illinois, where Elle

class notes

Ethan Pressly ’12 and bride Elle Stenerson smile wide on their wedding day.

Martin Cosier LLM’13 with wife Jen Cl ark and newborn son Max, on their adventures abroad.

Doug Johnson JD/MELP’13 with daughter Ruby Joy and wife Krystal.

continues to teach music and Ethan practices environmental law.

Ashley Romeo-Boles married Mark Boles, a Strafford, Vermont local, after a whirlwind romance following a meeting at his parents’ maple sugar house. They were married at his parents’ house, following the tradition of his siblings all marrying there.

Several alumni were in attendance and the Women’s Rugby team showed up to support! Ashley passed the Vermont and New Hampshire bars and is currently working as an associate at Schuster, Buttrey & Wing, P.A. in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Mark and Ashley live in Corinth, Vermont with their dog and cat.

nance Program within the U.S.-China Partnership for Environmental Law. All of us are doing great... and loving the endless summer in the tropics!”

ers who are environmentally-minded.

Stephanie Tavares-Buhler JD/ MELP was recently hired as the Easement Project Manager at the Marin Agricultural Land Trust in Point Reyes Station, California. Stephanie will be helping to protect small coastal farms in perpetuity and protect valuable watersheds in Marin County, California through the acquisition of voluntary conservation easements.

Natalie Wicklund received the Freedom Fighter Award from the Montana Innocence Project for pro bono work. The Montana Innocence Project works to exonerate those who are wrongfully convicted. Wicklund has been providing pro bono litigation assistance in cases seeking to exonerate the innocent using DNA testing.

Natalie Wicklund is now an Assistant Public Defender with the Office of the Public Defender in Butte, Montana.

2013 Brian Durkin bdurkin@vermontlaw.edu Rae Kinkead rmkinkead@gmail.com Martin Cosier LLM writes “My wife, Jen Clark, and I were joined by our first child, Max Cosier, in Bangkok on October 2. We’ve since headed back to Yangon, Myanmar (once Max became an Aussie citizen and then received his first passport) where I manage the VLS Myanmar Environmental Gover-

Bailey Dunl ap JD/MELP’13 married Travis Rogers on October 5, 2013 at Winn Park in Atlanta, Georgia.

Alex English JD/MELP recently had an article published by International Rivers on dam removal and effective watershed management as a tool for combating climate change: “Let All Rivers Run to the Sea.” Doug Johnson JD/MELP and his wife Krystal celebrated the birth of their daughter, Ruby Joy, on August 22, 2013. Ruby weighed eight pounds, two ounces, and was 19.5 inches long at birth. Everyone is doing well!

As of September 2013, William McMullin MELP has switched careers and he is now a Realtor in Metro-Detroit Michigan. He specializes in relocating people with pets and assists home buy-

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class notes

IN MEMORIAM On June 20, 2013, Frank Berk ’78 unexpectedly passed away, surrounded by his wife, four children, and his sister. Frank moved to South Royalton in 1975 to attend Vermont Law School where he was part of the third class, graduating cum laude in 1978. He fell in love with Vermont where he would live for the rest of his life. It is also where he met many of his closest lifelong friends. He was a dedicated member of the South Royalton community, serving on the school board for many years, acting as the town attorney (from his office “between the Co-op doors”), and coaching various youth teams. He cared deeply about the town and believed he’d stumbled upon the best place in the world to live. A memorial service was held on June 26, 2013 in the Jonathon B. Chase Community Center at Vermont Law School. Many of his classmates

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returned to South Royalton for the ceremony, which was followed by a reception for family and friends on the Debevoise Hall Back Lawn.

Edson E. Kaarela ’85, died peacefully at his home after an illness.

He leaves his parents, two sisters, and three nephews. A Celebration of Life was held on December 2, 2012 in Gardner, Massachusetts.

Mariann Samaha ’92, a lifelong resident of Boston’s South End, passed away on June 6, 2013. She had been working as a juvenile defense attorney, representing indigent children in Boston.

Mariann was a dear and devoted spouse, beloved daughter, and dear sister, and she is survived by many loving cousins, nieces, nephews, neighbors and friends. A memorial service was held in Boston, Massachusetts on June 21, 2013.

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Thaddeus Swank Jr. ’91 died April 25, 2013, at a Bangor health care facility after a long illness. Thaddeus was employed as a Maine State Trooper before pursuing his interest in law at Vermont Law School. After graduation he worked as a legal consultant for several companies including the American Ophthalmological Association. His ashes are interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor, Maine.

In 2013 we also lost the law school’s founder, Anthony Doria, who succumbed to a several year battle with heart trouble and cancer. A full obituary will be published in the next issue of Loquitur.

inter alia

Growing Climate Change Vermont Law recently announced our Top 10 Environmental Watch List for 2014. This year, with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels having breached a disturbing threshold, the entire list focuses on legal and policy actions that hope to address our rising global temperature or prepare us to adapt to increasingly intense weather-related disasters. Food and agriculture play a role: they show up on the list at #7, in the new federal Farm Bill.

1. Obama’s Decision on the Keystone Pipeline President Obama’s awaited decision on the Keystone XL pipeline has become a proxy for the larger debate on climate change. Will Obama allow the pipeline to go forward?

2. Natural Gas: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

The recent fracking boom may do more harm than good for the climate if the U.S. EPA doesn’t do a better job of regulating methane releases. Even if it does, will cheap natural gas displace cleaner energy options like wind and solar?

3. Severe Weather Events and the National Flood Insurance Program Will federal flood insurance reforms fully embrace the new reality of climate change driving frequent and intense storms?

4. Regulation of Carbon Emissions for Existing Power Plants Under the Clean Air Act § 111 Will the U.S. EPA finally propose regulations that significantly reduce carbon emissions from existing coal fired power plants?

5. China Regulates CO2 Emissions Will China’s public pledge to mitigate environmental issues and adopt meaningful greenhouse gas controls take hold, or will political obstacles and rapid growth get in the way?

6. Stationary Sources of Greenhouse Gases Will the Supreme Court, which recently let stand the D.C. Circuit’s decision that greenhouse gases present a danger to the environment through climate change, allow the EPA to control greenhouse gases from stationary sources?

8. Brazil Repeals Forest Code and Deforestation Accelerates Will the Brazilian courts uphold constitutional protections for future generations as a basis to strike down new forest laws that allow destruction of the world’s climateprotecting forests?

9. Will Montana Coal go to China?

Will a plan to ship coal—the leading source of CO2 pollution—from Montana to China be halted following environmental review by two federal agencies, amid early signs that China might be stepping away from coal as preferred energy source?

10. Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy The Pacific Coast Action Plan could be an effective blueprint for locally driven climate and energy policy. Will it be implemented in 2014?

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7. The Farm Bill as Climate Change Policy Will the new Farm Bill’s policies cause agriculture to contribute to or mitigate climate change? As the largest investment in working lands, the pending Farm Bill may be our best bet to address agriculture’s contribution to this secrious issue. Proposed changes would ironically reduce conservation programs, which mitigate climate change, and provide more insurance for farmers affected by changing conditions, shoring up profits for commodity producers.

Vermont Law School—with significant help from the Environmental Law Center and the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law—compiles the annual watch list to enhance public understanding, debate, and participation in judicial, regulatory, and legislative actions that significantly affect people and the natural world. The Top 10 issues are chosen based on their significance to the environment and public well-being, and whether a key development is expected in the coming year. For more details on the issues that made the 2014 list, visit http://watchlist.vermontlaw.edu/

W I N T E R 2013 / 14

Vermont Album

Broomball on the Green. South Royalton, Vermont.

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