Environmental and Energy Law Program

A look back at 2016, highlights of the people who visited, events that took place and everyday life at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Jody Freeman: The stunning results of the 2016 election have prompted headlines suggesting that Trump will, with the help of the Republican Congress, dramatically reverse the Obama legacy on climate, energy and the environment. But how realistic is this threat? The short answer is: the picture is significantly more complicated, and markedly less bleak, than the headlines suggest.

Wendy Jacobs ’81, clinical professor and director of Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, will lead the Living Lab Course and Research Project, which is designed to bring together students from across the University in interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative approaches for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at Harvard and beyond.

On April 1, Harvard Law School hosted a conference on 'Presidential Power in an Era of Polarized Conflict,' a daylong gathering in which experts from both sides of the aisle debated the president’s power in foreign and domestic affairs, and in issues of enforcement or non-enforcement.

Harvard students, faculty and fellows are training new high-tech instruments on Boston’s skies, searching for one well-known troublemaker and one escapee among the atmosphere’s invisible gases.

Two former EPA Administrators, who served Republican Presidents, William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly, filed a friend of the court brief supporting the Obama administration’s plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants. EPA’s Clean Power Plan is being challenged in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by a coalition of State and industry opponents. This week, EPA filed its response to the legal challenge, and a number of other briefs are being filed in support of the Administration.

Ten research projects driven by faculty collaborators across six Harvard Schools will share over $1 million in the second round of grants awarded by the Climate Change Solutions Fund, an initiative launched last year by President Drew Faust to encourage multidisciplinary research around climate change.

As the growth of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” transforms more rural landscapes across the heartland into industrial zones, companies are less willing to disclose the chemicals they inject into the ground, Harvard researchers have found.

Former United States EPA Administrators William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly formally moved today to participate in pending litigation in support of the legality of the President’s Clean Power Plan. The motion seeking leave to file a friend of the court brief was written by Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus of Harvard Law School.

The recent installation of 312 solar panels atop the WCC building on the Harvard Law School campus is the latest step toward helping HLS meet Harvard’s sustainability goals, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016.

In previous exchanges with my colleagues Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus, I have explained why EPA’s Clean Power Plan lacks statutory authority and raises serious…

For the purposes of what we hope to be our final rebuttal, we will confine ourselves to just one topic: the essential distinction between legal…

Our colleague Larry Tribe’s response to our initial posting serves as a reminder of why he is widely celebrated as one of the nation’s most…

When my friends Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus defend the legality of the EPA’s power plant rule by saying that no one would take the…

Noted constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe ’66, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, has made headlines with his Congressional testimony that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional. Professors Jody Freeman LL.M. '91 S.J.D. '95 and Richard Lazarus '79--two leading Harvard Law professors with expertise in environmental law, administrative law, and Supreme Court environmental litigation--take an opposing view.

Experts debate the constitutionality of the president’s climate change plan Noted constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe ’66 has made headlines with his Congressional testimony that…

In a discussion on the EPA's proposed regulations on power-plant emissions, HLS Professors Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman said that the proposed rules have the potential to both transform the national energy scene and invigorate international climate-change negotiations.

The Harvard Food Law Society hosted The Meat We Eat: 2014 Forum on Industrial Animal Farming, on Friday, April 4. The forum, co-hosted with the HLS Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, explored the legal and policy aspects of industrial animal farming and related effects on public health, the environment and animal welfare.

n the spirit of Harvard University President Drew Faust’s recent focus on addressing the problem of climate change, we interviewed HLS Professor Jody Freeman, who served in the Obama administration as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change and is the co-author of a forthcoming book on global climate change and U.S. law.