Joseph C. Zengerle

Senior Advisor, Clinic for Legal Assistance to Servicemembers and Veterans

Joseph C. Zengerle was founder and first Executive Director of the Clinic for Legal Assistance to Servicemembers and Veterans (CLASV) at George Mason University School of Law and has served as senior advisor to the clinic since retiring from the law school on August 1, 2011.

Zengerle joined Mason Law in 2002 and, in 2004, founded CLASV (formerly CLAS) as the first clinic in American legal education to offer free civil legal assistance to active duty members of the armed forces and their families. He also developed and taught a seminar on Homeland Security and the War on Terror (2002-04) and co-taught courses on War and Law (2007). 

In 2005, Zengerle initiated and was co-counsel (with Mason Law Dean Daniel Polsby and Patrick Henry Professor of Law Nelson Lund) on a brief amicus curiae in the Supreme Court case of Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 547 U.S. 47 (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. More than forty law schools and faculties belonging to FAIR, or appearing separately, opposed the Solomon Amendment, which the Supreme Court subsequently upheld unanimously.

Immediately prior to joining Mason Law, Zengerle served as executive director of the Legal Aid Society of D.C. having previously spent twenty years in private practice in Washington. Zengerle graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and began his legal career as an associate at Arnold & Porter. He then clerked for Judge Carl McGowan on the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger and was co-founder of the Washington office of now-Bingham McCutchen.

Zengerle is a graduate of West Point and received the Bronze Star as a unit commander in Vietnam. He was an Airborne Ranger Infantry officer and served in Vietnam as a special security assistant to General William Westmoreland during the Tet Offensive, and then to General Creighton Abrams. In 1979 Zengerle was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as assistant secretary of the Air Force (Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Installations) after nomination by President Carter. 

Zengerle also chaired the boards of the Disabled American Veterans, the Agent Orange Settlement Foundation, the Emeritus Foundation, and the Swarthmore College Parents Council, and served on numerous advisory bodies, including the Committee of Visitors of the University of Michigan Law School, the National Sponsoring Committee of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the Standing Committee on Pro Bono Affairs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the Advisory Council of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.