Richard J. Lazarus

Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law

Appointments

• Visiting Professor of Law, 2002 (Winter term)
• Austin Wakeman Scott Visiting Professor of Law, 2008-2009, 2010 (Winter term)
• Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law, 2011

Education

• University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana B.A. 1976, Economics
• University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana B.S. 1976, Chemistry
• Harvard Law School J.D. 1979

Biographical Statement

Richard Lazarus is the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law Harvard University, where he teaches environmental law, natural resources Law, Supreme Court advocacy, and torts. Professor Lazarus has represented the United States, state and local governments, and environmental groups in the United States Supreme Court in 40 cases and has presented oral argument in 13 of those cases. His primary areas of legal scholarship are environmental and natural resources law, with particular emphasis on constitutional law and the Supreme Court. He has published two books, The Making of Environmental Law (U. Chicago 2004), and Environmental Law Stories (Aspen Press, co-edited with O. Houck 2005). He was also the principal author of Deep Water - The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (GPO 2011), which is the Report to the President of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission, for which he served as the Executive Director. The Commission was charged with investigating the root causes of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and recommending changes in law and policy to reduce the risk of future spills and to mitigate their impacts. Prior to joining the Harvard law faculty, Professor Lazarus was the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he also founded the Supreme Court Institute. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and has a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois.

Research Interests

• Environmental Law
• Natural Resources Law
• Supreme Court Advocacy
• Constitutional Law

Subject Areas for Accepting Press Inquiries

• 2010 Gulf Oil Spill
• Climate Change
• Environmental Law
• Natural Resources Law
• Presidential Investigative Commissions
• Supreme Court Advocacy
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• United States Supreme Court

Subject Areas for Supervising Written Work

• Constitutional Law
• Environmental Crimes
• Environmental History
• Environmental Justice
• Environmental Law
• Natural Resources Law
• Regulatory Takings
• U.S. Supreme Court Advocacy and Decision Making

Other Information

2011-2012 Faculty Disclosures re: Related Outside Interests and Activities

Representative Publications

• Lazarus, Richard J. "The Power of Persuasion Before and Within the Supreme Court of the United States," 2012 University of Illinois Law Review (forthcoming 2012).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Deep Water-The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling-Report to the President of the United States" (2011).
  (Executive Director of Commission and Principal Report Author)
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future," 40 Environmental Law Reporter (Third Annual Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review) 10749 (2010).
  (reduced version of 2009 Cornell Law Review article based committee selection of law review articles published that year that represent the "best legal and policy solutions to pressing environmental problems"); A Reply, 40 Environmental Law Reporter 10766 (2010) (a short reply on three published commentaries on my article))
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Docket Capture at the High Court," 199 Yale Law L.J. Online 89 (2009).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Advocacy Matters Before and Within the U.S. Supreme Court: Transforming the Court by Transforming the Bar," 96 Georgetown Law Journal 1487 (2008).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Environmental Law After Katrina: Reforming Environmental Law by Reforming Environmental Lawmaking," 81 Tulane Law Review 1019 (2007).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "The Measure of a Justice: Justice Scalia and the Faltering of the Property Rights Movement within the U.S. Supreme Court," 57 Hastings Law Journal 759 (2006).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Congressional Descent: The Demise of Deliberative Democracy in Environmental Law," 94 Georgetown Law Journal 619 (2006).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Human Nature, the Laws of Nature, and the Nature of Environmental Law," 24 Virginia Environmental Law Journal 231 (2005).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. "Restoring What's Environmental About Environmental Law in the Supreme Court," 47 UCLA Law Review 703 (2000).
  
• Lazarus, Richard J. The Making of Environmental Law (University of Chicago Press 1996).
  (paperback edition)
  

Bibliography

View bibliography