Michael B. Gerrard

Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Law School

Michael B. Gerrard is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on environmental law and climate change law and directs the newly established Center for Climate Change Law, whose objective is to develop legal techniques to fight climate change.  Before joining the Columbia faculty in January 2009, he was managing partner of the 110-lawyer New York office of Arnold & Porter LLP; he is now Senior Counsel to the firm.  He practiced environmental law in New York City full time from 1979 to 2008 and tried numerous cases and argued many appeals in federal and state courts and administrative tribunals.  He was the 2004-2005 chair of the American Bar Association's 10,000-member Section of Environment, Energy and Resources.  He has also chaired the Executive Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Since 1986, Gerrard has written an environmental law column for the New York Law Journal, and since 1989 he has been editor of a monthly newsletter, Environmental Law in New York.  He is author or editor of seven books, two of which were named Best Law Book of the Year by the Association of American Publishers: Environmental Law Practice Guide (twelve volumes, 1992) and Brownfields Law and Practice: The Cleanup and Redevelopment of Contaminated Land (four volumes, 1998). His other books are Environmental Impact Review in New York (two volumes, with Philip Weinberg and Daniel Ruzow, 1990); Whose Backyard, Whose Risk: Fear and Fairness in Toxic and Nuclear Waste Siting (1994); The Law of Environmental Justice (1999, 2d ed. 2008); Amending CERCLA (with Joel Gross) (2006); and  Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (2007).

Legal Media Group's Guide to the World's Leading Environment Lawyers, based on 4,000 questionnaires, reported in 2005 and again in 2007 that Gerrard "received more personal nominations for this guide than any other lawyer in the world."

He received his B.A. from Columbia University and his J.D. from New York University Law School, where he was a Root Tilden Scholar.