Joseph C. Zengerle

Biographical Sketch

Joseph Zengerle is the Executive Director of the Clinic for Legal Assistance to Servicemembers (CLAS) at George Mason University School of Law.  

As Executive Director, he oversees the operation of CLAS, which he founded in 2004 and which remains the only clinic in American legal education to offer free civil legal assistance to active duty members of the armed forces and their families, including supervision of student cases and conduct of coursework, liaison with public agencies and private organizations, financial support and administration of staff and facilities.

Professor Zengerle graduated from West Point in 1964 and became an Airborne Ranger Infantry officer.  He served in Vietnam in 1968 as a special security assistant to General William Westmoreland during the Tet Offensive and then to General Creighton Abrams, later commanding his own unit in I Corps, where he received the Bronze Star.

Professor Zengerle attended the University of Michigan Law School, where he graduated (Dec. 1971) magna cum laude and was Note and Comment editor of the law review.  Professor Zengerle began his legal career as an associate at Arnold & Porter, clerked for Judge Carl McGowan on the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger, and co-founded the Washington office of now-Bingham McCutcheon.

In 1979, President Carter nominated Professor Zengerle as assistant secretary of the Air Force (Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Installations).  He was the first Vietnam veteran confirmed by the Senate for a civilian position in the Pentagon.  In 1980, he set aside a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial architectural competition, where Maya Lin’s design of the Wall was chosen.

After twenty years of private practice in Washington, Professor Zengerle became executive director of the Legal Aid Society of D.C for five years.  Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, Professor Zengerle developed and taught a seminar on Homeland Security and the War on Terror at George Mason law school (2002-04) and co-taught War and Law in the spring and fall semesters of 2007.

In 2005, Professor Zengerle was an organizer and co-counsel, with Mason Law Dean Daniel Polsby and Patrick Henry Professor of Law Nelson Lund, of a brief amicus curiae in the Supreme Court case of Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 126 S.Ct. 1297 (2006).  The Mason effort produced the only brief for law school faculty and students that supported the Solomon Amendment, which conditions universities’ receipt of federal funds on law schools’ allowing JAG recruitment on campus.  The briefs from all other academic institutions made constitutional and statutory arguments against the Amendment’s validity.  The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Solomon Amendment in Chief Justice John Roberts’ first constitutional opinion. See Unanimous Supreme Court Upholds Solomon Amendment