Citations for environmental and energy law scholars 2021

The most-cited environmental and energy law professors from 2016-2020

Brian Leiter at Chicago is once again doing his occasional series identifying the top cited legal scholars in the United States in a range of substantive areas. 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 US scholars who work substantially or primarily on environmental and energy law. Like prior years, I haven’t separated out scholars whose work is not primarily in environmental law, but still have a significant impact on the field, 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. I also differ from Leiter in including scholars who are currently in government service in my totals.

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. Thanks to Jonathan Adler at Case Western, who did much of the initial legwork on compiling cite counts, though I filled in some gaps and take responsibility for any errors.   I used the same basic methodology as Leiter, and these are citations from 2016-2020, inclusive. If any readers identify any errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments or by email.

legal academia, legal scholarship