Professor of Law
804-287-6511
University of Richmond School of Law
Room 220, Law School
28 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173 law.richmond.edu
Joel Eisen is a Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law.
Professor Eisen’s expertise centers on energy law and policy (focusing on topics relating to the modernization of the electric grid), environmental law and policy, and administrative law. He is a co-author of a leading law and business school textbook on energy law, Energy, Economics and the Environment: Cases and Materials, as well as numerous books, book chapters, treatises, and law review articles on electric utility regulation, renewable energy, and brownfields law and policy.
His scholarship has appeared in journals at Harvard, UCLA, Duke, Notre Dame, North Carolina, George Washington, Utah, Fordham, Illinois, Wake Forest, U.C. Davis, and William & Mary law schools, among other venues. In recognition of his contributions to scholarship, Richmond Law named him the inaugural Austin Owen Research Fellow for 2013-2018. He was awarded the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award in 2010, and his article “Residential Renewable Energy: By Whom?” was voted one of the four top environmental articles of 2011 by the Vanderbilt Law School and Environmental Law Institute. From 1993-2005, he was Director of the Robert R. Merhige, Jr., Center of Environmental Law. In 2009, Professor Eisen served as a Fulbright Professor of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, China.
Professor Eisen began his legal career at the San Francisco law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen. Following this, he served as a committee counsel to the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives before transitioning to law teaching in 1993 at Richmond.
Professor Eisen is a graduate of the Stanford Law School (J.D. 1985) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. degree in Civil Engineering, Transportation Planning concentration in 1981). His primary avocation is constructing crossword puzzles; he has had puzzles published in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal.