HLS Professor Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95 has been named Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the White House. She will serve as senior advisor to Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate "czar."

The founding director of the HLS Environmental Law Program, Freeman is one of the nation’s leading environmental law and administrative law scholars. She has taught at HLS since 2005.

Freeman’s major works in environmental law include Timing and Form of Federal Regulation: The Case of Climate Change, 155 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1499 (2007), and Modular Environmental Regulation, 54 Duke L. Rev. 795 (2005). She is the co-author of a leading casebook in environmental law (with Daniel Farber and Ann Carlson) and has produced two other significant books: “Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation, Lessons after Twenty Years of Experience” (Oxford University Press 2006, edited with Charles Kolstad) and “Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy” (Harvard University Press, 2009, edited with Martha Minow).

In 2006, Freeman authored an amicus brief on behalf of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in MA v. EPA, the global warming case decided by the Supreme Court in 2007. Her analysis of the implications of the case, Massachusetts v. EPA: From Politics to Expertise (with HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule), appears in the 2007 Supreme Court Review

Freeman has testified in Congress and before state commissions on administrative law and environmental law issues. She has served as vice-chair of the ABA Administrative Law Section sub-committees on Dispute Resolution and Environmental Law and Natural Resources. In 2006, she chaired the Executive Committee on Administrative Law for the Association of American Law Schools.

Prior to joining HLS, Professor Freeman taught for 10 years at UCLA where in 2004 she received the law school's Rutter Award for excellence in teaching, and in 2001 was voted Professor of the Year. At UCLA, she co-founded the law school’s Environmental Law Program.

In addition to her law degrees from Harvard, Freeman earned a B.A. from Stanford in 1985 and an LL.B. from the University of Toronto in 1989.

Alert from http://www.volokh.com They just keep on commin'

http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=505

Jody Freeman

Professor of Law Office: Hauser 412

Assistant: Kathleen Curley 617/495-3097

Phone: (617) 496-4121

Email: freeman@law.harvard.edu

Research Interests

Administrative Law Environmental Law Governance Theory Natural Resource Law Privatization Regulation

Education

Stanford B.A. 1985 University of Toronto LL.B. 1989 Harvard law School LL.M. 1991 Harvard Law School S.J.D. 1995

Appointments

Professor of Law, 2005

Representative Publications

Government by Contract (Jody Freeman & Martha L. Minow eds., Harvard University Press 2009). DeShazo, J.R. & Jody Freeman. "Timing and Form of Federal Regulation: The Case of Climate Change," 155 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1499 (2007).

Vermeule, Adrian & Jody Freeman. "Massachusetts v. EPA: From Politics to Expertise," 2007 Sup. Ct. Rev. 51 (2007). Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation, Lessons after Twenty Years of Experience (Jody Freeman & Charles Kolstad eds., Oxford University Press 2006).

Farber, Daniel A., Jody Freeman & Anne Carlson. Environmental Law: Cases and Materials (St. Paul West Group 7th ed. 2006).

DeShazo, J.R. & Jody Freeman. "Public Agencies as Lobbyists," 105 Columbia Law Review 2217 (2005). Full text: WWW Freeman, Jody & Daniel Farber. "Modular Environmental Regulation," 54 Duke Law Review 795 (2005).

Freeman, Jody. "The Private Role in Public Governance," 75 New York University Law Review 543 (2000).

Freeman, Jody. "Private Parties, Public Functions and the New Administrative Law" in Recrafting the Rule of Law: The Limits of Legal Order 331 (David Dyzenhaus ed., Toronto: Hart Pubishing, 1999). (Reprinted in 52 Admin. L. Rev. 818-58 (2000))

Freeman, Jody. "Collaborative Governance in the Administrative State," 45 UCLA Law Review 1 (1997).

Everything … and Right Now

The founding director of Harvard’s new Environmental Law Program wastes no time—and says there’s no time to waste.

Leah Fasten

Professor Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95 joined the faculty in 2005. She recently told the Bulletin why climbing Mount Kilimanjaro didn’t turn her into an environmentalist—and what did.

HLB: What led you to this field?

JF: I’m a skier and a hiker. I’m from Vancouver; we spend all our time outside. But it wasn’t primarily that. I came to environmental issues more intellectually, I confess, as someone who is interested in how systems work, how regulation works. I like design. The question is: How do we create governance institutions to deal with high-stakes problems in a context of tremendous interest group conflict? I’m a lawyer who thinks like an institutional architect.

What do you enjoy about what you’re doing?

It’s hard to describe these serious environmental issues as fun, because it can sound perverse—I mean, sea levels are rising, hurricanes are intensifying, national security is being compromised by climate change, and it’s all sort of bad news. But in fact these issues are exhilarating to me because there is such opportunity for innovation and creativity, both by government and nongovernment actors. There is so much good academic scholarship to write, and so much to do to train students for the future. Strangely, my optimism just deepens at the darkest, bleakest moments. When Hurricane Katrina happened, like many people who care about climate change, I actually thought, Finally, a catastrophic event that will make people realize that something serious and strange is going on in the natural world! If anything will bring this home and force government to act, it’s going to be the terrible impact of Katrina.

With the Environmental Law Program, you’ve accomplished a tremendous amount in a very short time.

Life is short. Once, my family sat around and talked about what we’d each be if we could be summed up by book titles. And my book title was Everything and Right Now. With these issues in particular—environmental impacts and especially climate change—you can’t sit around and wonder what you should do in the next 10 or 20 years. It’s too urgent for that kind of luxury. This is not to say I’m a doomsayer. I’m not. But if we don’t figure out how to make some transitions to a smarter, high-tech and more energy-efficient way of doing things, and if we don’t do it fast—in the next two, three, four, five years—we could be facing some very bad consequences. So I have a kind of impatience that’s helpful.

Did something happen in your life that makes you feel life is short?

I’ve had some wonderful adventures, like climbing Kilimanjaro and scuba diving in some of the greatest spots in the world. You really do marvel at the wonder of it all when you’re standing there at 19,000 feet, or when you’re staring at an ocean of life 80 feet below sea level. And now it’s all at risk—the reefs are bleaching, Kilimanjaro’s snow is melting, and the polar ice cap is retreating. It gives me real pause, and at the same time I find it motivating. I want to write scholarship that is both intellectually interesting and able to have an impact, and I want to train students to tackle the future’s problems.

You received awards for teaching when you were at UCLA. Do you have a vision of teaching that you bring into the classroom?

I’m a high-energy person in the classroom. I try to bring the students into my excitement and interest. The challenge is to teach analytic tools and legal skills in a way that connects with students and makes them feel part of a shared experience. It’s a relational thing. When it works, it’s to their credit as much as mine. There’s no way to be a good teacher by yourself. It doesn’t exist.

—Interview by Jeri Zeder

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WTF?