Rising second-year student Jamie McClintock ’23 has received the 2021 Stuart Henry Environmental Law Fellowship, a fellowship created in honor of Stuart Henry, renowned Austin environmental attorney and activist, who died in 2018. The first fellowship was first awarded in summer 2019.
The summer fellowship funds students to work with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofits providing legal services or law-related advocacy on behalf of underrepresented individuals or communities working to preserve Texas’ natural resources and to protect the Texans who rely on those resources. The William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law administers the fellowship at the Law School, with the assistance of the Texas Law Environmental Clinic.
McClintock will work with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in Austin with both the Community Development and the Environmental Justice Teams focused on facility permitting proceedings in the RioGrande Valley. As a first-year student, McClintock was involved in organizing GRITS (the Getting Radical in the South conference) and volunteered with the Mithoff Pro Bono Program’s Parole Project. She served with AmeriCorps in Alabama before attending law school. McClintock hopes to pursue a career in environmental public interest law, in either a legal aid office or an environmental nonprofit. “People are greatly affected every day by the water they drink and the air they breathe,” said McClintock. “I want to help ensure that people, no matter their socioeconomic status, have a voice when it comes to pollution in their neighborhood.”
“It’s wonderful to see Stuart’s legacy continue through Jamie’s work with TRLA empowering communities in the Rio Grande Valley to protect their health and the environment,” said Kelly Haragan, director of the Environmental Clinic.