Christopher H. Schroeder

Christopher H. Schroeder is a former Member Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, and the former Charles S. Murphy Chair, at Duke University School of Law, and Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies.

Professor Schroeder has taught and written in the areas of Environmental Law and Policy, Constitutional Law, Tort Law and Philosophy, and Administrative Law for more than 20 years.

While in academia, Schroeder has served as a consultant or advisor to the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Commission on Air Quality, the National Academy of Sciences, the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate, and the United States Department of Justice. Prior to beginning his academic career, Professor Schroeder represented Environmental Defense in rate-making proceedings before the California Utilities Commission, seeking the incorporation of energy conservation and renewable energy measures into the expansion plans of public utilities. Under contract with the Department of Energy, Professor Schroeder studied the impact of large-scale coal-fired power plants, and made recommendations urging development of smaller scale modular facilities. He has testified before committees of the United States House and the Senate on a variety of subjects.

Before entering teaching, Professor Schroeder was a partner in a small San Francisco law firm, devoting approximately one-third of his time to environmental representations involving California energy issues. He has also worked for Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, examining legal and institutional impediments to conservation and renewable resource development. He represented the Clean Air Trust in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, a challenge to EPA's ozone and particulate matter standards, and is representing the Trust in administrative and judicial proceedings concerned with EPA's revisions to the New Source Review process. He currently serves on a National Academy of Sciences advisory committee, examining at EPA's request the use of data from non-therapeutic studies involving humans. Since entering teaching, Schroeder has taken several leaves of absence to do government service. He has served as chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and as special counsel to that committee. He also served for three years in the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, including as Acting Assistant Attorney General.

Professor Schroeder has written on a variety of subjects in the areas of environmental law and policy, risk regulation, constitutional law and the workings of democracy. He co-authors one of the leading environmental law casebooks, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science and Policy, now in its 4th edition and used in law schools and undergraduate courses throughout the country. He is currently editing a book to be published by Resources for the Future, Assessing EPA, which examines many facets of EPA's performance in the 1990s, with recommendations for reform or improvement.

Professor Schroeder has been special editor of four volumes of Law & Contemporary Problems, whose subject matters have been regulating the chemical industry, evaluating the EPA after its first 20 years, the independent council statute, and the relationship between law and politics. Together which Professor Robert Glicksman, Schroeder has co-authored several studies of the disposition of environmental cases in the federal courts, most recently including a study of the treatment of science in the federal courts. The most recent of these publications, which included a statistical analysis of all the cases in the federal courts of appeals in the last decade, was recognized as one of the five best articles in environmental law in 2001.

Professor Schroeder has published numerous articles and book chapters on environmental law and policy, on the regulation of risk, and on the development of environmental policy within a constitutional democracy. His articles have appeared in the Columbia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and Law & Contemporary Problems, the Environmental Law Reporter and Litigation (the journal of the ABA Litigation Section), as well as in compilations and edited books. Recently, his writing has been examining the adequacy of so-called "third way" environmental solutions as a means to break through policy impasses, the implications of the Supreme Court's recent federalism decisions on environmental policy, and the role of the courts generally in influencing environmental law and policy.

Schroeder is a principal investigator on a pending NIEHS grant application to establish an Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at Duke, to study vulnerable populations, with emphasis on toxicogenomics, toxicogenetics and comparative biology. He sits on the executive committee of the Center for Environmental Solutions at Duke, a multi-disciplinary research center dedicated to studying and recommending constructive solutions to major international and national environmental problems. He also directs the Program in Public Law, which is devoted to public and professional education regarding the laws that regulate the behavior of public officials. Since September 11, 2001 he has spoken often on the war on terrorism, and the balance between civil liberties and national security. As information secrecy and government reorganization have implications for environmental law and policy, his research has begun turning to these terrorism-related issues as well.

Christopher Schroeder
Duke University School of Law
Durham, NC 
919.613.7096
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