Retired United States Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney Quentin C. Pair will lead a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at Vermont Law School with a discussion of the environmental justice and civil rights movements. The celebration and Pair’s talk, open to the public and press, will take place from 12:45 to 2 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, in Chase Community Center on the VLS campus.

"We are honored to welcome Quentin Pair to Vermont Law School and hope the greater Vermont community will join us in celebrating Dr. King’s legacy and learning more about the connections between civil rights and environmental justice," said Shirley Jefferson, associate dean for student affairs and diversity at VLS. "Mr. Pair has devoted his distinguished career, including 35 years at the Department of Justice, to making a difference, and we are privileged to hear him speak."

Pair, who teaches Environmental Law and Environmental Justice at Howard University School of Law, served as a senior trial attorney at the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), Environmental Enforcement Section, from 1980 to 2015. As lead counsel for the prosecution and management of civil enforcement litigation referred to ENRD by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Pair supervised the activities of attorneys in all aspects of litigation. He also served as a special prosecutor in criminal referrals to ENRD, and from 2000 to 2015 represented DOJ on the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice.

In an August 2014 Grist interview, Pair talked about the civil rights history made in the 1965 Selma, Ala., (to Montgomery) march for voting rights and, later, the emergence of the environmental justice movement—and the role of young people in both. "In the 1980s, in Warren County, N.C., where you have a bunch of minorities and poor people living, and where few have access to their representatives in the legislature, the state decides it’s going to put this landfill, and fill it with all kinds of PCBs and cancerous waste. … On the opening day of the landfill, some 500 residents came out and laid down in the road where the trucks were supposed to carry the trash to the site. It attracted media attention not only because it marked the rise of the EJ movement but also because all 500 of them were arrested. What interested me the most is that many of them were children. So there were shades of Selma."

In addition to his career at the DOJ, Pair formerly served as a senior attorney advisor with the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and senior team leader and special advisor under former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Previously he worked as an associate with Ridley & McLean and at the Law Office of F. Lee Bailey, Melvin Belli & Edward J. Bellen. Pair’s many awards include the 2013 American Bar Association Environment, Energy, and Resources Dedication to Diversity and Justice; 2014 Burton Award for Public Service in Government; 2015 DOJ Environmental Justice Legacy Award, and 2015 Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice Pioneers in Environmental Justice Award. He earned his juris doctor (JD) from Boston University School of Law.       

For more information about the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at Vermont Law School, or about student affairs and diversity at VLS, email Associate Dean Shirley Jefferson at sjefferson@vermontlaw.edu or call 802-831-1333. For more information about VLS news and events, visit vermontlaw.edu/news-and-events.

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Vermont Law School, a private, independent institution, is home to the nation’s largest and deepest environmental law program. VLS offers a Juris Doctor curriculum that emphasizes public service; three Master’s Degrees—Master of Environmental Law and Policy, Master of Energy Regulation and Law, and Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy; and four post-JD degrees —LLM in American Legal Studies (for foreign-trained lawyers), LLM in Energy Law, LLM in Environmental Law, and LLM in Food and Agriculture Law. The school features innovative experiential programs and is home to the Environmental Law Center, South Royalton Legal Clinic, Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, Energy Clinic, Food and Agriculture Clinic, and Center for Applied Human Rights. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu, find us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.