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News Release

Two VLS Professors Elected to The American Law Institute

Monday, December 21, 2020

SOUTH ROYALTON, Vt.

Hillary Hoffmann and Jonathan Rosenbloom

 

Vermont Law School (VLS) professors Hillary Hoffmann and Jonathan Rosenbloom have been elected to The American Law Institute (ALI), a leading independent organization that produces scholarly work that clarifies, modernizes, and improves the law, and therefore, the administration of justice.

ALI’s membership is comprised of judges, lawyers, and law professors, and is selected on the basis of outstanding achievement in the legal profession. All new members are nominated by current ALI members and voted upon by the ALI Council based on their merits and potential contribution to the Institute.  

“Election to The American Law Institute is a tremendous accomplishment and a real testament to the expertise and dedication that Hillary and Jonathan bring to the legal profession,” said VLS Dean and President Thomas McHenry. “Having two Vermont Law School professors elected to the Institute in one year speaks volumes about the quality of our faculty and how they are viewed by their colleagues across the county.”       

Professor Hoffmann's areas of expertise include federal Indian law, natural resources law, and public lands law. Her recent scholarship analyzes the systems governing natural resource uses on federal and tribal lands and explores the conflicts that arise from Constitutional and other systemic challenges facing indigenous nations in the United States. She has also lectured and published extensively on the topics of energy development, mining, livestock grazing, and other extractive uses of public lands and tribal lands. Her recent book—A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection—examines the federal and state legal structures inhibiting the protection of indigenous cultural values and resources.

Professor Rosenbloom is the author of Remarkable Cities and the Fight Against Climate Change; co-author of two textbooks, Resilience & Sustainability: From Theory to Practice and Land Use and Sustainable Development Law: Cases and Materials; and co-editor of Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons and Beyond Zero-Sum. His scholarship has been published in Hastings Law Journal, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Colorado University Law Review, Washington Law Review, and others. Rosenbloom is the founding executive director of the Sustainable Development Code, a model land use code designed to provide local governments with the best sustainability practices in land use.

Hoffmann and Rosenbloom join 26 other members of ALI in Vermont, including four VLS professors and three members of the Vermont Supreme Court.