Richard Stewart, University Professor and John Edward Sexton Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Recognized as one of the world's leading scholars in environmental and administrative law, Richard Stewart is University Professor and John Edward Sexton Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. Prior to joining the NYU School of Law faculty, Stewart had served as a Byrne Professor of Administrative Law at Harvard Law School and a member of the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resource Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and Chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Professor Stewart directs the school's Center on Environmental and Land Use Law, which sponsors research, conferences, and publications on cutting-edge issues of environmental and land use law. Students are closely involved in the Center's activities, many of which focus on international and comparative environmental law issues. He is currently leading a major Center project, funded by the Rockefeller foundation to examine international conflicts over regulation of genetically-modified (GMO) crops and foods, examining the conflicting perspectives and interests of the U.S. and other exporters of GMO agricultural products, the EU, and developing countries; evaluating the performance of existing international laws and institutions for resolving these conflicts; and recommending new approaches to international governance to promote the socially beneficial development of agricultural biotechnologies. Stewart, along with NYU Professor Benedict Kingsbury, has also launched a major new project on Global Administrative Law, examining how procedural opportunities for public participation in administrative decision making and review mechanisms can help meet accountability gaps in current global regulatory institutions, ranging from the WTO and the UN to informal networks of environmental and economic regulatory officials. This project, headquartered at NYU, is proceeding in collaboration with academics and officials around the globe.
Recent Center conferences and publications have compared environmental regulation in the United States, Europe, and globally; addressed the current controversy over regulation of products containing genetically modified organisms; and examined hazardous waste cleanup policies. Recently the Center held the first conference to address the recent surge of claims by international investors against domestic environmental regulations as resulting in unlawful expropriation of their investment. The Center has also conducted environmental legal assistance projects for developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Students participated extensively, through the Law School's International Environmental Law Clinic, in a four-year Center project to assist the Environmental Protection Committee of China's National People's Congress in devising and strengthening China's environmental laws in a Center project, sponsored by the U.N., to promote public access to environmental information and participation in environmental decision-making in Eastern and Central Europe.
Recently awarded an honorary doctorate from The University of Romae "La Sapienza," Stewart assists in the United Nations' efforts to combat global warming by developing a system for an international market in CO2 emissions reductions credits. He has also taken part in the U.N.'s formulation of principles to award damages from environmental injuries caused by Iraq during the Gulf War.
A prolific author, Stewart has published ten books and more than 80 articles on environmental and administrative law, including the intersection between theory and practice in environmental law and the need to develop innovative methods for environmental protection. His writing favors a reliance on a market-oriented approach to environmental protection, rather than the central-planning systems of command and control regulation that have been used for the past 30 years. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Bologna, Chicago, and Rome, the University of California at Berkeley, the European University Institute, and Georgetown University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, a Director of the Health Effects Institute, and a member of the editorial boards of several European scholarly journals.