Scott W. Stern is an associate attorney with Earthjustice’s Biodiversity Defense Program. He works on a wide range of matters, including opposing destructive mineral exploration projects in the Patagonia Mountains and using the public trust doctrine in an effort to save the Great Salt Lake.

Prior to joining Earthjustice, Scott was a Justice Catalyst fellow with Greenpeace International and clerked for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal and co-president of the Yale Environmental Law Association. In law school, he won the Benjamin Scharps Prize (best paper by a 3L), the Colby Townsend Prize (best paper by a 2L), and the Joseph Parker Prize (best legal history paper), among other honors. Before starting law school, he was an archival researcher and freelance writer, during which time he completed his first nonfiction book, The Trials of Nina McCall, which was a New York Times editor’s choice selection, a Boston Globe best book of the year, and has been optioned for feature film. His writing regularly appears in the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and other popular and scholarly publications. A proud product of Pittsburgh, he received his B.A. and M.A. from Yale University, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.