Hanley Sustainability Collaborative : University of Dayton, Ohio

Sunrise over a field Through Dayton Law's partnership with the Hanley Sustainability Institute (HSI), students are offered a direct window into the worlds of environmental advocacy and the building of the legal and regulatory structure of a more sustainable and green economy.

The Hanley Sustainability Collaborative will allow students to pursue an academic concentration in Law and Sustainability, where they will spend part of their classroom time taking courses through HSI in sustainability studies, while also taking advantage of Dayton Law's expanded set of offerings in areas like climate change law, environmental advocacy, and law and development studies.

The Collaborative will also provide students with externship and summer fellowship opportunities around environmental law.

Through the Collaborative, members of the law school community will complement HSI’s scientific, technical, and sociological proficiency with their own interests/expertise in legal analysis and advocacy to connect sustainability thought and practice to concrete doctrinal and policy mechanisms for institutionalizing environmental justice and designing a green political economy.

Along with the opportunities available for law students to get hands-on experience dealing with these issues, the partnership will include ongoing programming on campus through lectures, symposia, and other events to deepen our campus conversation around questions of law and sustainability.

Origins of the Hanley Sustainability Institute

The University of Dayton established the Hanley Sustainability Institute in 2014 with a $12.5 million gift from the foundation of George Hanley '77 and Amanda Hanley. With the gift, the single-largest in University history, the Hanleys challenged the University to become a national leader for innovation in sustainability.

Birth of the Collaborative

The Collaborative between Dayton Law and HSI came into being at a summit between the leadership of the two groups in March 2019.

The partnership between Dayton Law and HSI comes in a time of climate chaos and persistent signs of environmental breakdown that are likely only to exacerbate inequality between and within the countries on our planet in the years to come. Now more than ever it is crucial for legal professionals to remember that the law’s highest calling is justice and to challenge ourselves to reimagine what this principle should mean for citizens of the 21st-century.