ANDREW WELLE

Andrew joined Our Children’s Trust in 2017 and now supervises staff attorneys and leads cases. He is the lead counsel in Natalie v. State of Utah, the first constitutional climate case to assert direct violations of the rights to life, health, and safety, and the first based directly on an originalist method of constitutional interpretation. Andrew is also developing new constitutional climate cases in several states, including Alaska.   

In 2023, he led an Amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic v. Bureau of Land Management with an analysis that incorporated the best available climate science and demonstrated that continuing fossil fuel emissions resulting from the approval of the Willow Project critically harm and endanger the lives, health, and safety of children. This follows Andrew’s significant work as lead attorney on Sagoonick v. State of Alaska (2022), where justices, writing in dissent, recognized that Alaska’s Constitution protects a fundamental right to a livable climate. In a long-standing partnership of over five years, Andrew leads a section of Yale Law School’s Environmental Protection Clinic, designing curricula and projects, and overseeing students’ work to advance Our Children’s Trust case development.  

He was a post-graduate fellow at the Environmental and Natural Resource Center at the University of Oregon School of Law, where his scholarship focused on the intersection of free trade agreements, environmental sovereignty, and the Public Trust Doctrine. He worked with Blue River Law on Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, and FOIA suits. Following law school, Andrew was an associate at Barnes & Thornburg LLP. He received his JD from University of Oregon School of Law and BA from Indiana University.