Law Professor Casey Leigh (formerly Jarman), who defined her 25-year career in Hawai‘i through her work in environmental law, has retired from the faculty to return to the Big Island where she and her family have lived and where she served as County Clerk while on leave from the Law School. She has been deeply involved in pro bono work for Volunteer Legal Services Hawai‘i and work with the Hawai‘i County Charter Commission.

Colleagues at the William S. Richardson School of Law and alumni who were her students through the years joined in a recent farewell fundraiser at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum to help fund the Jarman Environmental Law Fellowship. This Fellowship provides summer stipends for law students who work for an environmental public agency or a non-governmental organization.

The evening raised over $2,000 for the fellowship fund.

Attorney Lea Hong, Hawai‘i director of The Trust for Public Land, was the chief organizer of the event and one of a multitude of Richardson graduates inspired to go into environmental law because of Casey Leigh.

“At the event Casey mentioned how in her retirement she wanted to restore native plants and plant seeds for native forests and we all commented about how she has already done that,” said Hong.

“She has planted seeds that have grown into robust forests around the state in terms of people trying to do good for Hawai‘i’s environment. There are all kinds of people in all different places like the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Army Corps of Engineers, who are all graduates of the Law School and her program in Environmental Law.”

Dean Avi Soifer said Leigh’s unique skills and her dedication to students and to the law school community will be deeply missed, noting that he had spent many months trying to convince her not to retire.

He said, "Casey was the first director of our Environmental Law Program and she has been instrumental in making it an award-winning program on the national level and an incredibly important part of saving and renewing our fragile environment in Hawai‘i.”

Prof. Leigh joined the Law School faculty in 1987, founding the school’s Environmental Law Program. Over the years she worked in innumerable ways to help
care for Hawai‘i’s environment, including co-editing two books on environmental subjects designed to empower Native Hawaiian communities to become involved more effectively in government decision-making.

To further that quest, Leigh also produced a CD, video and workbook on lawyering skills for community members, and offered educational workshops throughout the state.

She never hesitated to offer her time to help community members seeking assistance. Planner Faith Caplan remembers the time a few years ago when she and several co-workers in public health and urban and regional planning were seeking a class in environmental law.

“It was not offered to non-law students,” Caplan remembers. “We approached Casey and she was very kind to agree to a seminar class for credit. We met in her office and reviewed key federal acts: the clean water act, the national environmental policy act, the endangered species act and others….We reviewed case law for each.”

Caplan remembers how patient Leigh was with these ‘students’ who had no law school experience, and how much she learned as a result of that seminar and how important it was to her overall understanding.

“The material turned out to be the most relevant of any of the classes I took for my Masters,” said Caplan.

In 1999 Leigh was honored with the prestigious President’s Award by Hawai‘i Women Lawyers. A year earlier she had chaired the Environmental Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools. From 1994 to 2002 she served on the Hawai’i Land Use Commission and she later took two years leave – from 2006-2008 – to serve as County Clerk for the Hawai‘i County Council as well as Chief Elections Officer.

Leigh received her BA magna cum laude from Barry University; her MS from Florida International University; her JD from the University of Mississippi and her LLM from the University of Washington. She lives in Volcano on the Big Island.