Emory Law School Website

William W. Buzbee

Professor of Law

William W. Buzbee is a Professor of Law, Director of the Emory Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, and a Director of Emory’s new Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance.  He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School (2003) and Cornell Law School (2006), and taught in 2003, 2005, and 2007 for the Leiden-Amsterdam-Columbia Law School Summer Program in American Law.  Professor Buzbee helped design and launch the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory Law School. He still chairs its Advisory Board. Professor Buzbee is also a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank.

Scholarship:  Professor Buzbee's scholarship focuses on environmental law, administrative law, and other public law topics, with his most recent publications focusing on regulatory federalism and design issues.  Recent scholarship includes “Asymmetrical Regulation: Risk, Preemption, and the Floor/Ceiling Distinction,” in 82 New York University Law Review 1547 (December 2007), as well as a forthcoming Cambridge University Press book for which he is the editor and a contributor, entitled Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question (forthcoming 2008).  Other publications have appeared in University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review (co-authored), Cornell Law Review (co-authored), Iowa Law Review, The Journal of Law and Politics, and in an array of other journals and books. Three of his articles have been named among the ten best environmental or land use law articles of that year and republished in the Land Use and Environment Law Review.  He is a co-author of the 5th edition of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy (Aspen 2007), with co-authors Professors Glicksman, Markell, Mandelker and Tarlock. 

Education, service, and professional background:  Professor of Law. J.D. Columbia Law School, 1986; B.A. Amherst College, magna cum laude, 1983.  Prior to joining Emory’s faculty, Professor Buzbee clerked for United States Judge Jose A. Cabranes, 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 and Tyler. Since becoming a professor, he has provided pro bono assistance to several not-for-profits and was co-counsel for a bipartisan group of former US EPA administrators in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court’s Rapanos case.  He has also testified about environmental and federalism issues before committees of Congress.