In Memoriam: Jamie Grodsky

We learned this weekend of the tragic death of Jamie Grodsky, a rising star in environmental law who taught at George Washington University.  She died after a brief illness.

Jamie joined the GW faculty in 2006, after serving as an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Jamie was a meticulous scholar and deeply dedicated teacher. She recently served as a co-investigator on a multi-university NIH grant dealing with the impacts of new biological technologies on environmental law, regulation, and the assessment of environmental risks. She recently co-edited a book on genomics and environmental regulation, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Prior to entering academia, Jamie had a rich and varied career.  She served as a Counsel to the Committee on Natural Resources of the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995, Counsel to the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate from 1995 to 1997, and was the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency from 1999 to 2001.  Before law school, Professor Grodsky worked for four and a half years as an Analyst at the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA),  served as the Educational Director at the Oceanic Society in San Francisco, and worked as a researcher at Woods Hole.

Jamie received her B.A. degree, with distinction, from Stanford University, her M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she served as an Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review and received the Adolf and Olaus Murie Award in Environmental Law and the Hilmer Oehlmann Prize for Legal Writing. Jamie then clerked for Judge Proctor R. Hug, then Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Our thoughts are with her family and friends in this dark hour.

Post script.  Jamie’s obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle is here.

Professor Jamie Grodsky