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 Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He was a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School (2003) and Cornell Law School (2006), and he 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 and chairs its advisory board. Professor Buzbee also is a founding Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington D.C.-based regulatory think tank. Professor Buzbee was awarded the 2007-2008 Emory Williams Teaching Award for excellence in teaching.

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 Cambridge University Press book for which he is the editor and a contributor, Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law and Reality of Federalism’s Core Question. 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 10 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 professors Glicksman, Markell, Mandelker and Tarlock. 

Education, Service and Professional Background: JD, Columbia Law School, 1986; BA, 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 U.S. EPA administrators in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court’s Rapanos case. He also testified about environmental and federalism issues before committees of Congress.