Jody Freeman

Jody Freeman (born 1964) is the Archibald Cox Professor at Harvard Law School and a leading expert on administrative law and environmental law. She served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House in 2009-2010. Freeman is a prominent scholar of regulation and institutional design, and a leading thinker on collaborative and contractual approaches to governance. After leaving the White House, she advised the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on topics of structural reform^[1] at the Department of the Interior. She has been appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States,^[2] the government think tank for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of federal agencies, and is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.^[3]

Freeman grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and graduated from Stanford University (B.A., 1985), the University of Toronto (LL.B. 1989), and Harvard Law School (LL.M. 1991; SJD 1995). In 1990-91, she clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal for a panel of judges including future Canadian Supreme Court Justice and UN High Commissioner Louise Arbour. From 1995-2005, Freeman was a Professor of Law at UCLA, where she co-founded the Environmental Law Program and was an award-winning teacher. From 2001-2004, Freeman also taught environmental law and served as Associate Dean for Law and Policy at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB.

In 2005, Freeman joined the Harvard Law School faculty.^[4] She was one of a number of prominent hires made during Dean Elena Kagan's tenure.^[5] In 2006, she founded Harvard’s Environmental Law and Policy program, which houses one of the nation’s leading environmental law clinics.

Freeman has written extensively on climate change law and policy.^[6] She is the co-author of a leading casebook in environmental law,^[7] and has produced two other significant books: Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation, Lessons after Twenty Years of Experience (2006, with economist Charles Kolstad)^[8] and Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy (2009, with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow).^[9] In 2006, Freeman authored an amicus brief on behalf of former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the global warming case decided by the Supreme Court in 2007. She wrote an influential article about the implications of the case in the 2007 Supreme Court Review.

Freeman’s scholarship in administrative law has focused on public-private collaboration, negotiated rulemaking, inter-agency coordination, and the dynamic between Congress and the President in overseeing agency decision making.

As a Deputy and Counselor to Carol Browner, Director of the new White House Office of Energy and Climate Change, Freeman contributed to a variety of policy initiatives on American energy and climate change issues, including greenhouse gas regulation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, oil and gas drilling, and the design of comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon. Freeman led the White House effort on the Obama administration’s historic national auto agreement, which set the first greenhouse gas standards in the U.S., and led to an agreement that will double the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks by 2025.

In 2012, Freeman was elected as an outside director of ConocoPhillips, one of the largest independent energy companies in the world. She serves on the Board's Public Policy Committee.

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