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Professor Jody Freeman

[faculty photo]

Archibald Cox Professor of Law

Office: Hauser 412
Assistant: Kathleen Curley 617/495-3097
Phone: 617/496-4121
Email: freeman@law.harvard.edu

Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law, is a leading scholar of administrative and environmental law and the founding director of the Harvard Law School Environmental Law and Policy Program. Professor Freeman served in the White House as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change from 2009-10.  In that role, she contributed to a variety of policy initiatives on greenhouse gas regulation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, transmission policy, oil and gas drilling, and comprehensive energy and climate legislation to put a market-based cap on carbon. She played a key role in the President's historic national auto agreement, which set the first greenhouse gas standards and strictest fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks in American history. After leaving the administration, Freeman served as an independent consultant to the President's bipartisan Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. She has been appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States, the government think tank for improving the administrative and regulatory process. In 2011, she was elected to the American College of Environmental Lawyers.

Freeman’s major writings in environmental law include Climate Change and US Interests, 109 Columbia L. Rev. 1531 (2009) (with Guzman), Timing and Form of Federal Regulation: The Case of Climate Change, 155 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1499 (2007) (with DeShazo), and Modular Environmental Regulation, 54 Duke L. Rev. 795 (2005) (with Farber). She is the co-author of leading casebook in environmental law and administrative law, 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 Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow). In 2006, Freeman authored an amicus brief on behalf of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. MA v. EPA, the global warming case decided by the Supreme Court in 2007. To hear Professor Freeman's remarks on climate policy at the EPA 40th anniversary event hosted by HLS, click here: EPA @ 40. Her analysis of the case, MA v. EPA: From Politics to Expertise (with HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule) appears in the 2007 Supreme Court Review.

Professor Freeman is also a prominent scholar of administrative law and regulation, and a leading thinker on collaborative and contractual approaches to governance. Her 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 2011. Professor Freeman's new article, "The Obama Administration's National Auto Policy: Lessons from the Car Deal" appears in the Harvard Environmental Law Review in 2011. Her new article, Agency Coordination in Shared Regulatory space, the subject of her chair lecture, is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review in 2012.

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.


Freeman has testified in Congress and before state and federal commissions on administrative law and environmental law issues, and consults on such issues in the U.S. and abroad.

Prior to joining Harvard faculty professor Freeman spent ten years at UCLA, where she co-founded the environmental law program and won the Rutter Award for excellence in teaching.