Academic Centers

Academic Centers at the UConn Law School provide forums for scholars and experts to discuss current and historical topics related to a center's focus. They also often provide students the opportunity to provide services to the community.

As of 2023, Centers are the Law School include: the Insurance Law Center, Center for Energy and Environmental Law, Connecticut Community Law Center and Center on Community Safety, Policing and Inequality. The Insurance Law Center and the Center for Energy and Environmental Law enrich the intellectual life of the UConn School of Law by bringing scholars and industry experts together in the fields of insurance, risk management, energy and environmental law. In addition, the law school hosts the Connecticut Community Law Center, which offers low-cost legal assistance to low- and moderate-income clients. The law school also collaborates closely with the Center for Children's Advocacy. Some materials had been collected on this latter group and are listed in the collection. (5.10.2023 https://law.uconn.edu/academics/centers/ )

Past centers have included the Center for First Amendment Rights (CFAR) 1993-2011 and the Connecticut Urban Legal Initiative (CULI). CFAR spanned and CULI 1997-2022. Other centers have been proposed and information related to these are found in RG 07.09. Brief descriptions of each center from the Law School's webpage ( https://law.uconn.edu/academics/centers/ ) follow:

The Insurance Law Center - located in Hartford, America's historic "insurance capital" - is the preeminent academic center for insurance and financial services law. Our LLM Program in Insurance Law is the oldest in the country and world-renowned.

In 2010, UConn School of Law created the Center for Energy and Environmental Law (CEEL) as part of a program for combined legal education, policy, and scholarship. CEEL offers the ability for students to focus their studies in these exciting areas by bringing together experts from many disciplines to tackle the complex and exhilarating challenges relating to the world's environmental and energy futures.

Law schools have a crucial role to play in the nationwide transformation of policing. The premise of our criminal justice system has long been that crime prevention, whatever its cost, is the overriding priority. The mission of the Center on Community Safety, Policing and Inequality is to question that assumption—and to provide advocates, officials, and community members with the tools necessary to effect meaningful change.

The Connecticut Community Law Center, an initiative of the UConn School of Law and the Hartford County Bar Association, provides support to new attorneys entering solo practice who offer legal help at reasonable rates to people who have traditionally been underserved by the justice system. Clients are people with low and moderate incomes who don't qualify for legal aid but can't afford standard legal fees.

The collection was put together by staff in the Archives and included the Center for Children's Advocacy material which has been maintained.