The Climate Legacy Initiative (CLI) was a collaborative project of the Vermont Law School (VLS) Environmental Law Center and The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR). Burns H. Weston, UICHR's founding Director and Senior Scholar, served as the CLI's Project Director and Senior Researcher. The grant ended in July 2009.

The Climate Legacy Initiative's overall purpose was to research and promote legal doctrines, principles, and rules appropriate for recognition by courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, and private sector institutions to safeguard present and future generations from harms resulting from global climate change. It takes as a given that climate change exists and confirms that lawyers have a vital role to play in both public and private discourse and action relative to it.

Based on the two meetings of the Distinguished Advisors Panel in Vermon, Burns Weston and Tracy Bach completed extensive revisions of the CLI Policy Paper, now titled Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the Laws of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Intergenerational Justice.