Citations for environmental and energy law professors 2018

The most-cited environmental and energy law professors in 2013-17

Brian Leiter at Chicago is again doing one of his occasional series identifying the top cited legal scholars in a range of substantive areas.  One of the lists he did covered public law scholars including environmental law– however, his list includes a number of top administrative law scholars who do not focus on environmental and energy law.  As I did the last time Leiter posted these totals, I thought it might be helpful to our readers to have a list that is focused on scholars who work substantially or primarily on environmental and energy law.  Unlike Leiter, I’ve just lumped everyone together without breaking out a separate category for those work only partially in the field—that’s because almost all environmental and energy law scholars could be characterized as working in other areas of law, given the interdisciplinary nature of the work.  So of course Cass Sunstein is number one. All the caveats that Leiter has indicated about the utility of looking at cite counts apply here.  In particular, I also want to emphasize that citations are only a partial and imperfect measure of scholarship, which in turn is only a partial measure of what environmental and energy law professors do.  My numbers differ slightly from Leiter’s at times because for most of these scholars, I did my own searches.   I used the same basic methodology as Leiter (including using the new Westlaw TE search function, which eliminates references in star acknowledgment footnotes), and these are citations from 2013-2017, inclusive.  If any readers identify any errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments or by email.

 

Rank Faculty First Name Faculty Last Name School Cite count
1 Cass Sunstein Harvard 5140
2 Dan Farber Berkeley 1470
3 Jody Freeman Harvard 820
4 Richard Pierce GW 810
5 Richard Stewart NYU 790
6 Richard Revesz NYU 765
7 Jonathan Adler Case Western 665
8 Carol Rose Arizona 655
9 JB Ruhl Vanderbilt 650
10 Richard Lazarus Harvard 570
11 Tom McGarity Texas 515
12 Jim Rossi Vanderbilt 485
13 Vicki Been NYU 470
14 Robin Kundis Craig Utah 460
15 Sidney Shapiro Wake Forest 455
16 Rob Glicksman GWU 450
17 Cary Coglianese Penn 440
18 Doug Kysar Yale 410
19 Jim Salzman UCLA 405
20 David Spence Texas 400
21 Michael Gerrard Columbia 375
22 Wendy Wagner Texas 370
23 Dan Tarlock Chicago-Kent 360
23 Lisa Heinzerling Georgetown 360
25 Hannah Wiseman Florida State 340
26 Robert Percival Maryland 330
27 Michael Blumm Lewis and Clark 325
27 Alex Klass Minnesota 325
29 Daniel Bodansky Arizona State 320
29 Mike Livermore Virginia 320

 

Reader Comments

3 Replies to “Citations for environmental and energy law professors 2018”

  1. Dear Mr. Eric Biber,
    The list above does not appear to include all of the excellent scholarship, insight and substantive ideas cited here on Legal Planet. The contributions of this distinguished internet forum have become a major influence on federal environmental policies such as the Paris Agreement, Clean Power Plan, Vehicle Emission Standards, Environmental Justice, Justice Kavanaugh, etc. Without the broad reach, support and dignity of Legal Planet, the great progress we see today would not be possible. Keep up the good work.
    bqrq

  2. There seems to be a disparity between the U.S. News rankings for environmental law and where the faculty scholarship talent is based. Law schools like Pace, Vermont, Lewis & Clark and Colorado — all top environmental law programs, according to U.S. News — do not make much of a showing here; only one professor from all of those law schools combined. In the meantime, schools like Harvard, NYU, Texas, GW and Vanderbilt have two or more faculty each on this list.

Comments are closed.

About Eric

Eric Biber is a specialist in conservation biology, land-use planning and public lands law. Biber brings technical and legal scholarship to the field of environmental law…

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About Eric

Eric Biber is a specialist in conservation biology, land-use planning and public lands law. Biber brings technical and legal scholarship to the field of environmental law…

READ more

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