Professor William Boyd Joins UCLA Faculty

Leading Energy and Environmental Law Scholar Will Bring Key Expertise to Emmett Institute

We are very excited to announce that Professor William Boyd of the University of Colorado Law School is joining the UCLA Law faculty effective July 1, 2018. He will hold a joint appointment with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Professor Boyd is one of the nation’s leading scholars of energy and environmental law. He has written pathbreaking articles on public utilities, their historical origins and the role they play in contemporary climate and energy policy; the history and role of risk regulation and analysis in American health, safety and environmental law; the emergence of forestry resources in international climate policy; and the role of science and technology in environmental law. Two of his articles have been selected as among the top five environmental law articles for the year in which they were published. Boyd is also the award-winning author of the book The Slain Wood: Papermaking and its Environmental Consequences in the American South, which received the 2016 Edelstein Prize from the Society for the History of Technology.

Boyd also serves as the project lead for the Governor’s Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF).  GCF is a consortium of 35 subnational jurisdictions around the world, including from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico,  Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and the United States. The GCF’s principal focus is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and land use.  Boyd will continue his GCF leadership at UCLA.

Professor Boyd received his law degree from Stanford and his Ph.D from the Energy and Natural Resources Group at UC Berkeley.  After clerking for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz  of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, he served as counsel for the minority staff of the  Senate Energy and Commerce Committee and practiced energy, environmental and climate change law at Covington & Burling in Washington D.C.  He joined the Colorado faculty in 2008.

Boyd will play an active role in the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law.  He joins a large group of climate, energy, environmental, land use and natural resources law scholars at Emmett, including co-Executive Directors Sean Hecht and Cara Horowitz; Faculty co-directors Ted Parson and me, Tim Malloy, Jim Salzman (also at the Bren School at UCSB), Alex Wang, and Jonathan Zasloff.

Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Professor William Boyd, UCLA Law