Hari M. Osofsky

Fellow since 2020

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law; Director, Energy Innovation Lab; Director, Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership; Professor of Environmental Policy and Culture (courtesy)

(181) 486-31521 (work)

[email protected]

Chicago, Illinois

Region 5 IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, and WI

Hari M. Osofsky is the Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and a Professor of Environmental Policy and Culture (courtesy) at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is the founding director of the Northwestern University Energy Innovation Lab, which brings together bipartisan business, government, and nonprofit leaders with groundbreaking interdisciplinary scholars to catalyze energy and emerging technology innovation. The Lab’s initial projects aim to shape rapidly evolving technology, regulation, and investment in ways that could transform the future of energy; they focus on data center optimization and the intersection of energy with AI, quantum computing, and space. She also serves as the founding director of the Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership, a collaboration of over 150 law schools from six continents that is advancing nonpartisan civic education, research, teaching, and programming. The Partnership focuses on judicial independence and separation of powers, the role of lawyers and legal representation, the role of universities and academic freedom, and due process.

Professor Osofsky’s over 50 publications focus on improving governance and addressing injustice in energy and climate change regulation. Her scholarship includes books with Cambridge University Press on climate change litigation, textbooks on both energy and climate change law, and articles in leading law and geography journals. She is currently working on interdisciplinary projects on data center energy optimization; new patterns of energy investment driven by the rapid development of AI, quantum computing, and cryptocurrency; the geopolitics of AI and energy; and the interface of energy and AI with the growing private-sector space industry. Professor Osofsky’s Emory Law Journal article, Energy Partisanship, was awarded the 2018 Morrison Prize, which recognizes the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year. Professor Osofsky has collaborated extensively with business, government, and nonprofit leaders to make bipartisan progress on these issues through her leadership roles and teaching. She is a member of the American Law Institute, fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and life fellow of the American Bar Foundation. The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center recognized her as one of the 2019 Women of Legal Tech.

In her prior roles, Professor Osofsky served as Dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Dean, Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of International Affairs, and Professor of Geography at Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs; and Robins Kaplan Professor of Law, Founding Director of the Energy Transition Lab, and Director of the Joint Degree Program in Law, Science & Technology at the University of Minnesota. She also served on the faculties at Washington and Lee University School of Law, the University of Oregon School of Law, and Whittier Law School. Professor Osofsky received a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oregon and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Degrees

J.D., Yale Law School; Ph.D., Geography, University of Oregon; BA, Yale University

Admissions

California

Court Admissions

California, 9th Circuit

Representative Publications (not including ACOEL Blogs)

• LINCOLN L. DAVIES, ALEXANDRA B. KLASS, HARI M. OSOFSKY, JOE TOMAIN & ELIZABETH WILSON, ENERGY LAW AND POLICY (3d Ed., 2022; 2d Ed., 2018; 1st Ed., 2014, West Academic Publishers) (4th Ed. forthcoming 2025).
• JACQUELINE PEEL & HARI M. OSOFSKY, CLIMATE CHANGE LITIGATION: REGULATORY PATHWAYS TO CLEANER ENERGY? (2015, Cambridge University Press).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Litigating Climate Change Infrastructure Impacts, 118 NW. U. L. REV. ONLINE 149 (2023).
• Hari M. Osofsky & Jacqueline Peel, Revisiting “The Grass is Not Always Greener”: Climate Change Regulation Amid Political Polarization, 39 YALE J. REG. 814 (2022).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Jacqueline Peel, Brett McDonnell & Anita C. Foerster, Green Boardrooms?, 53 CONN. L. REV. 335 (2021).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Jacqueline Peel, Brett McDonnell & Anita C. Foerster, Energy Re-Investment, 94 INDIANA L.J. 635 (2019).
• Jacqueline Peel & Hari M. Osofsky, Rights Turn in Climate Change Litigation?, TRANSNATIONAL ENVTL. L. 1-31 (2017).
• Hari M. Osofsky & Jacqueline Peel, Energy Partisanship, 65 EMORY L.J. 695 (2016) (awarded 2018 Morrison Prize by Arizona State University).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Jessica Shadian & Sara L. Fechtelkotter, Arctic Energy Cooperation, 49 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1431 (2016).
• Hannah J. Wiseman & Hari M. Osofsky, Regional Energy Governance and U.S. Carbon Emissions 43 ECOL. L. Q. 143 (2016).
• Jacqueline Peel & Hari M. Osofsky, Sue to Adapt, 99 MINN. L. REV. 2133 (2015).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Rethinking the Geography of Local Climate Action: Multi-Level Network Participation in Metropolitan Regions, 2015 UTAH L. REV. 173.
• Hari M. Osofsky & Hannah J. Wiseman, Hybrid Energy Governance 2014 ILL. L. REV. 1.
• Hari M. Osofsky & Hannah J. Wiseman, Dynamic Energy Federalism, 72 MARYLAND L.
REV. 773 (2013).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Suburban Climate Change Efforts: Possibilities for Small and Nimble Cities Participating in State, Regional, National, and International Networks, 22 CORNELL J. L. & PUB. POL’Y 35 (2012).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Kate Baxter-Kauf, Bradley Hammer, Ann Mailander, Brett Mares, Amy Pikovsky, Andrew Whitney & Laura Wilson, Environmental Justice and the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, 20 N.Y.U. ENVT’L L.J. 99 (2012).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Multidimensional Governance and the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, 63 FLORIDA L. REV 1077 (2011) (selected for Land Use and Environment Law Review’s compilation of the top land use and environmental law articles).
• Hari M. Osofsky, The Role of Climate Change Litigation in Establishing the Scale of Energy Regulation, 101 ANNALS ASSOC. AM. GEOGRAPHERS 775 (2011) (accepted through peer review process for special issue on Energy).
• Hari M Osofsky, The Geography of Climate Change Litigation Part II: Narratives of Massachusetts v. EPA, 8 CHICAGO J. INT’L L. 573 (2008) (awarded the Daniel B. Luten Award for the best paper by a professional geographer by Energy & Environment Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers).
• Hari M. Osofsky, Climate Change Litigation as Pluralist Legal Dialogue?, 26 STANFORD ENVTL. L.J. & 43 STANFORD J. INT’L L. 181 (2007) (Joint Issue) (runner-up for Land Use and Environment Law Review’s compilation of the top land use and environmental law articles).
• Hari M. Osofsky, The Geography of Climate Change Litigation: Implications for Transnational Regulatory Governance, 83 WASH. U. L.Q. 1789 (2005) (runner-up for Land Use and Environment Law Review’s compilation of the top land use and environmental law articles).