Michael Vandenbergh

Professor Vandenbergh is the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. An award-winning teacher, Professor Vandenbergh has published numerous articles and book chapters on private environmental governance and household energy use. Beyond Gridlock, his article on private climate governance with physicist Jonathan Gilligan, won the Morrison Prize as the top sustainability article in North America in 2015. His book with professor Gilligan, BEYOND POLITICS: THE PRIVATE GOVERNANCE RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, won the 2018 Chancellor’s Award for Research, and was identified in the ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM as one of the top environmental law and policy books of the last 50 years. Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty Vandenbergh was a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C., and he served as Chief of Staff of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-95. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and the University of Chicago, and his research has been discussed in major media outlets such as National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, National Geographic, USA Today, and the Washington Post.