By Julia Robins, Staff Writer
2014 has been a busy year for the Virginia Coastal Policy Clinic (VCPC), and Virginia Sea Grant has never been more excited to count the clinic as part of its extension family.
VCPC’s new director, Roy Hoagland, is leading a class of William & Mary law students in conducting legal and policy analysis for coastal communities and participating in state-level policy meetings. On December 5, the clinic will host the Governor’s Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission as part of the clinic’s second annual daylong conference on climate change.
This week, in advance of the conference, we’ll post stories every day to highlight VCPC students and the coastal policy questions they’ve been tackling this semester.
The VCPC is an ongoing collaboration between the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Virginia Sea Grant (VASG), and William & Mary Law School. It provides science-based legal and policy analysis of critical and coastal management issues to state and local governments and educates the Virginia policymaking, non-profit, legal, and business communities about these subjects.
“Virginia Sea Grant’s end-users are tackling extremely complex coastal and marine resource challenges and they have told us that the interface between science, law, and policy is a critical information gap in meeting those challenges,” says Troy Hartley, VASG director. “Virginia Sea Grant has added that capacity by supporting the clinic and bringing VCPC into the Sea Grant family, including VCPC’s membership in the broader national Sea Grant legal network.”
Says Hoagland, “As the clinic continues to evolve and mature, it will, I believe, become widely recognized as the ‘go to’ resource for learned, high quality legal assistance in solving difficult and real coastal policy issues confronting Virginia.”
