Jump to content

Jody Freeman: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
create customary sections, order chronologically and flag unsourced
→‎Controversy: turn inline externallinks into refs
Line 35: Line 35:


== Controversy ==
== Controversy ==
In 2023, Freeman faced significant criticism for a perceived conflict of interest regarding her simultaneous climate leadership roles at Harvard, and her service on the board of oil and gas major [[ConocoPhillips]]. In March 2022, Harvard students called on her to choose between her $350,000/year ConocoPhillips salary and her Harvard leadership responsibilities.[https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/31/freeman-divest-open-letter/] In April 2022, fellow Harvard faculty raised concerns about her receipt of a major Harvard research grant to study corporate net-zero pledges at the same time that ConocoPhillips was attracting scrutiny for greenwashing.[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/01/harvard-professor-jody-freeman-conocophillips-fossil-fuels-climate] In wake of the approval of the [[Willow project|Willow Project]], [[The Guardian]] published emails reportedly showing Freeman participating in the company's lobbying efforts to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to weaken its climate risk disclosure rules.[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/06/harvard-professor-jody-freeman-sec-conocophillips-emails] The Guardian also noted that Freeman's emails may have violated Harvard policy requiring affirmative disclosure of conflicts of interest in each communication with a policymaking audience. Freeman denied any policy violations. Following publication of the emails, a group of Freeman's students joined the call for her to resign.[https://hlrecord.org/hls-section-7-students-urge-professor-jody-freeman-to-resign-from-conocophillips-board/]
In 2023, Freeman faced significant criticism for a perceived conflict of interest regarding her simultaneous climate leadership roles at Harvard, and her service on the board of oil and gas major [[ConocoPhillips]]. In March 2022, Harvard students called on her to choose between her $350,000/year ConocoPhillips salary and her Harvard leadership responsibilities.<ref>{{Cite web |last= The Harvard Crimson |title=Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard Calls on Law Professor to Leave ConocoPhillips Board of Directors |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/31/freeman-divest-open-letter/ |access-date=2023-09-03 |website=www.thecrimson.com}}</ref> In April 2022, fellow Harvard faculty had raised concerns about her receipt of a major Harvard research grant to study corporate net-zero pledges at the same time that ConocoPhillips was attracting scrutiny for greenwashing.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lakhani |first=Nina |last2=reporter |first2=Nina Lakhani Climate justice |date=2023-04-01 |title=Harvard professor’s fossil fuel links under scrutiny over climate grant |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/01/harvard-professor-jody-freeman-conocophillips-fossil-fuels-climate |access-date=2023-09-03 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> In April 2023 in wake of the approval of the [[Willow project]], [[The Guardian]] published emails reportedly showing Freeman participating in the company's lobbying efforts to convince the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] to weaken its climate risk disclosure rules.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Moulds |first=Josephine |last2=Lakhani |first2=Nina |date=2023-04-06 |title=Harvard professor lobbied SEC on behalf of oil firm that pays her lavishly, emails show |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/06/harvard-professor-jody-freeman-sec-conocophillips-emails |access-date=2023-09-03 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> The Guardian also noted that Freeman's emails may have violated Harvard policy requiring affirmative disclosure of conflicts of interest in each communication with a policymaking audience. Freeman denied any policy violations. Following publication of the emails, a group of Freeman's students joined the call for her to resign.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Strauss |first=Marty |last2=Hls '23 |date=2023-04-13 |title=HLS Section 7 Students Urge Professor Jody Freeman to Resign from ConocoPhillips Board |language=en-US |url=https://hlrecord.org/hls-section-7-students-urge-professor-jody-freeman-to-resign-from-conocophillips-board/ |access-date=2023-09-03}}</ref>


In August 2023, Freeman resigned from the ConocoPhillips board.[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/harvard-professor-resigns-conocophillips-board] In her announcement, she noted that it would allow her to "focus on my research at Harvard and make space for some new opportunities."
In August 2023, Freeman resigned from the ConocoPhillips board.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Noor |first=Dharna |date=2023-08-04 |title=Harvard environmental law professor resigns from ConocoPhillips after months of scrutiny |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/harvard-professor-resigns-conocophillips-board |access-date=2023-09-03 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>In her announcement, she noted that it would allow her to "focus on my research at Harvard and make space for some new opportunities."


== References ==
== References ==

Revision as of 22:46, 3 September 2023

Jody Freeman
Born1964 (age 59–60)
EducationStanford University (BA)
University of Toronto (LLB)
Harvard University (LLM, SJD)

Jody Freeman (born 1964) is the Archibald Cox Professor at Harvard Law School and a leading expert on administrative law and environmental law.[1] in 2009–2010, she served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change[2] in the Obama White House. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers,[3] and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Freeman also serves on the Climate Advisory Board of Norges Bank Investment Management, the asset manager of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund.

Early life and education

Freeman grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and graduated from Stanford University (B.A., 1985), where she majored in human biology and played varsity volleyball, the University of Toronto (LL.B. 1989), and Harvard Law School (LL.M. 1991; SJD 1995).[citation needed]

Career

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.[citation needed] From 1995 to 2005, Freeman was a Professor of Law at UCLA, where she co-founded the Environmental Law Program and was an award-winning teacher.[citation needed] From 2001 to 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.[citation needed]

She has been a visiting professor at Georgetown Law Center, New York University Law School, and Stanford Law School.[citation needed]

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 and Energy Law and Policy program,[6] a legal "think tank" for climate and energy policy analysis, and established one of the nation's leading environmental law clinics.[7]

In 2006, Freeman authored an amicus brief[8] 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.

In 2015, she and her colleague Richard Lazarus co-authored an amicus brief on behalf of William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly, former Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, supporting the government in the litigation over the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.[9]

In the White House, Freeman led the Obama administration's effort to double fuel efficiency standards, producing the historic agreement with the auto industry to set the nation's first federal greenhouse gas standards, and launching a program of greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. As a Deputy and Counselor to Carol Browner, Director of the new White House Office of Energy and Climate Change, Freeman also 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. After leaving the administration, she served as an independent consultant to the President's bipartisan Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, advising on structural reforms to offshore drilling.[10]

Work

Freeman is a scholar of both administrative law and environmental law, and has written extensively about climate change, environmental regulation and executive power.[11] She is also known for her early work on "collaborative governance," which helped to establish a field focused on public-private approaches to regulatory problems. She has served as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States,[12] an expert body that advises the federal government on how to improve the regulatory and administrative process.

Freeman is widely published in leading American law reviews and is one of the most cited scholars in public law across the nation.[13] She has produced several books, including Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (3d ed. 2023, with Michael Gerrard and Michael Burger). Other significant books include Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation, Lessons after Twenty Years of Experience (2006, with economist Charles Kolstad)[14] and Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy (2009, with former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow).[15] Freeman has also co-authored leading casebooks in both administrative law and environmental law.[16] Her work has been published in several languages; a volume of her administrative law articles was published in Chinese in 2010.

Freeman has served[17] as an independent director of ConocoPhillips, and as a member of the advisory council of the Electric Power Research Institute. She consults regularly for government and non-governmental parties, advising on litigation and regulatory strategy. She has written guest opinion pieces for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Politico, Vox and Foreign Affairs.

Controversy

In 2023, Freeman faced significant criticism for a perceived conflict of interest regarding her simultaneous climate leadership roles at Harvard, and her service on the board of oil and gas major ConocoPhillips. In March 2022, Harvard students called on her to choose between her $350,000/year ConocoPhillips salary and her Harvard leadership responsibilities.[18] In April 2022, fellow Harvard faculty had raised concerns about her receipt of a major Harvard research grant to study corporate net-zero pledges at the same time that ConocoPhillips was attracting scrutiny for greenwashing.[19] In April 2023 in wake of the approval of the Willow project, The Guardian published emails reportedly showing Freeman participating in the company's lobbying efforts to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to weaken its climate risk disclosure rules.[20] The Guardian also noted that Freeman's emails may have violated Harvard policy requiring affirmative disclosure of conflicts of interest in each communication with a policymaking audience. Freeman denied any policy violations. Following publication of the emails, a group of Freeman's students joined the call for her to resign.[21]

In August 2023, Freeman resigned from the ConocoPhillips board.[22]In her announcement, she noted that it would allow her to "focus on my research at Harvard and make space for some new opportunities."

References

  1. ^ "Jody Freeman, Harvard Law School". Harvard Law School. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  2. ^ "Jody Freeman named Counselor for Energy and Climate Change". Harvard Law Today. 2009-01-30. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  3. ^ "American College of Environmental Lawyers". American College of Environmental Lawyers. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  4. ^ "Jody Freeman named Counselor for Energy and Climate Change". Law.harvard.edu. January 30, 2009. Retrieved 2011-12-15.
  5. ^ Jennifer Koons, Greenwire (2009-03-26). "Environmental policy a specialty of Obama's solicitor general". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-12-15.
  6. ^ "Home - Harvard Law School". eelp.law.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
  7. ^ "Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic". Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  8. ^ "Brief for Amicus Curiae Madeleine K. Albright in Support of Petitioners, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency" (PDF). NRDC. 2006-08-31. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  9. ^ "Freeman, Lazarus author amicus motion on behalf of former EPA Administrators to back Clean Power Plan". 2015-12-03. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  10. ^ "Meeting 4: October 13, 2010 (Washington, D.C.) National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling". Meeting 4: October 13, 2010 (Washington, D.C.) National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Archived from the original on 2011-12-28. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  11. ^ "Jody Freeman SSRN Author Page". Social Science Research Network. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  12. ^ "Jody Freeman | ACUS". Administrative Conference of the United States. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  13. ^ "25 Most-Cited Public Law Scholars". Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  14. ^ Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation: Lessons from Twenty Years of Experience. Oxford University Press. October 2006. ISBN 9780199783694. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  15. ^ "Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy". Harvard University Press. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  16. ^ Farber, Daniel A.; Freeman, Jody; Carlson, Ann E. (2010). Farber, Freeman and Carlson's Cases and Materials on Environmental Law, 8th (American Casebook Series) 8th Edition. ISBN 978-0314908834.
  17. ^ "Inline XBRL Viewer". www.sec.gov. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
  18. ^ The Harvard Crimson. "Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard Calls on Law Professor to Leave ConocoPhillips Board of Directors". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2023-09-03.
  19. ^ Lakhani, Nina; reporter, Nina Lakhani Climate justice (2023-04-01). "Harvard professor's fossil fuel links under scrutiny over climate grant". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-09-03.
  20. ^ Moulds, Josephine; Lakhani, Nina (2023-04-06). "Harvard professor lobbied SEC on behalf of oil firm that pays her lavishly, emails show". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-09-03.
  21. ^ Strauss, Marty; Hls '23 (2023-04-13). "HLS Section 7 Students Urge Professor Jody Freeman to Resign from ConocoPhillips Board". Retrieved 2023-09-03.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  22. ^ Noor, Dharna (2023-08-04). "Harvard environmental law professor resigns from ConocoPhillips after months of scrutiny". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-09-03.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jody_Freeman&oldid=1173697871"