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Professor Jody Freeman

[faculty photo]

Professor of Law

Email: freeman@law.harvard.edu

Professor Freeman is currently on leave from the Law School while serving as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the White House. She is counselor and senior advisor to Carol Browner, the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. At HLS, Professor Freeman teaches Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Legislation and Regulation, and Natural Resources Law, and is the founding Director of the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program. Professor Freeman is a prominent scholar of administrative law and  regulation, and a leading thinker on collaborative and contractual approaches to governance as well as one of the nation’s leading scholars of environmental law. Her recent work focuses on the legal and institutional challenges presented by climate change. Her article, “Climate Change and U.S. Interests” (co-authored with Andrew Guzman) appears in the Columbia Law Review. In MA v. EPA, the global warming case decided by the Supreme Court in 2007, Freeman authored an influential amicus brief on behalf of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. MA v. EPA. EPA. Professor Freeman’s analysis of the implications of the case appears in the 2007 Supreme Court Review (with Vermeule) MA v. EPA: From Politics to Expertise.

Professor 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) (with DeShazo). Her article, Modular Environmental Regulation, 54 Duke L. Rev. 795 (2005) (with Farber) was selected as one of the top ten environmental law articles of the year by the peer-reviewed Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law. Professor Freeman’s 2006 book, Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation (co-edited with Kolstad), is a unique collection of articles by economists and legal scholars comparing the performance of market mechanisms to command and control approaches in environmental regulation. Freeman also co-authors a leading casebook in environmental law (with Farber and Carlson), now in its seventh edition.

Freeman’s major works in administrative law include The Private Role in Public Governance 75 NYU L. Rev. 543 (2000) (for which she received the annual scholarship award from the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for the single best article in the nation on administrative law), Extending Public Law Norms Through Privatization, 116 Harv. L. Rev.1285 (2003), The Contracting State, 28 FLA. St. U. L. Rev 155 (2001), Regulatory Negotiation and the Legitimacy Benefit, 9 NYU Env’l L. Rev. 60 (2001) (with Langbein), and Collaborative Governance in the Administrative State, 45 UCLA L. Rev 1 (1997). She has also written extensively on the dynamic between Congress and Executive agencies (The Congressional Competition to Control Delegated Power, 81 Tex. L. Rev. 1443 (2003)), and among agencies (Public Agencies as Lobbyists, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 2217 (2005)) (both with DeShazo). Her administrative law writings have been translated into several languages; a collection of her articles was published in China in 2009. Professor Freeman’s new book, Government by Contract, Outsourcing and American Democracy (co-edited with Minow), was published by Harvard University Press in 2009.

Professor Freeman has testified in Congress and the states 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. Professor Freeman consults on administrative law and environmental law matters, and lectures widely both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2007, she delivered invited lectures at the Shanghai People’s Congress and Beijing University and in 2008 delivered a public lecture on environmental law and ethics at Princeton University.

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.