William Buzbee

William W. Buzbee is the Edward and Carole Walter Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor Buzbee holds the inaugural Edward and Carole Walter Professor chair and is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He also serves as the Faculty Director of Georgetown Law’s Environmental Law & Policy Program. In his teaching and scholarship, he specializes in environmental law, legislation and regulation, and administrative law. Recent publications focus on climate regulation, deregulation and law governing agency policy change, and federalism. He also offers seminars on advanced environmental, regulatory, and constitutional law subjects, with his most recent seminar focused on “The Art of Regulatory War.”

Professor Buzbee’s books include Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press 2014) and Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question (Cambridge University Press, hardcover 2009, paperback 2011). He has been a co-author of the 5th , 6th, 7th and 8th editions of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen/Wolters Kluwer).

Law review scholarship includes publications in New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Duke Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics and in an array of other journals, books, news outlets, and blogs. Three of his articles have been named among the 10 best environmental or land use law articles of that year and republished in the Land Use and Environment Law Review. He regularly assists with appellate and Supreme Court environmental, federalism, and regulatory litigation, and also has testified before congressional committees on environmental and regulatory matters. He has published op-eds on regulatory and environmental issues with The New York Times, The Hill, and CNN, and he has been quoted and interviewed by numerous press and media outlets.

Professor Buzbee joined Georgetown from Emory Law School, where he was a professor of law and directed its Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He also spearheaded the creation of Emory’s Turner Environmental Law Clinic and later served as the Advisory Board Chair. He also co-directed Emory’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He has been a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Cornell and Illinois law schools. He has also served as a professor for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law. Professor Buzbee is a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, and before becoming a professor was an attorney-fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and did environmental, land use and litigation work for the New York City law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. JD, Columbia Law School, 1986; BA, Amherst College, magna cum laude, 1983.

Books