INSTITUTION | Vanderbilt University
POSITION | Director of the Climate Change Research Network, and Co-director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program
Michael P. Vandenbergh is the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, Director of the Climate Change Research Network, and Co-director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program at Vanderbilt University Law School. He is a leading scholar in environmental and energy law whose research explores the relationship between formal legal regulation and informal social regulation of individual and corporate behavior. His work with Vanderbilt’s Climate Change Research Network involves interdisciplinary teams that focus on the reduction of carbon emissions from the individual and household sector. His award-winning 2017 book with physicist Jonathan Gilligan, Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change, explores how private governance initiatives directed at households and corporations are reducing global carbon emissions. Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty, Professor Vandenbergh was a partner at a national law firm in Washington, D.C., and he served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 1995.
Professor Vandenbergh received his J.D. from the University of Virginia and his B.A. from University of North Carolina. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law School, and the Wharton School. He is a fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a member of the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Professor Vandenbergh serves on the Steering Committee and Outreach and Engagement sub-committee.