Academic Focus: Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Michael Gerrard had been a leading environmental lawyer for 30 years when he founded Columbia Law School’s climate law center in 2009. In doing so, he left behind one significant aspect of his practice: litigation. 

Under the direction of Gerrard, who is also Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law advocates for laws and regulations combating climate change by writing amicus briefs, drafting model legislation, conducting research, advising state and local governments, and tracking regulation. The center tracks climate-related lawsuits worldwide. But it doesn’t sue.  

“That’s what everybody outside the Law School immediately asks, whether we litigate, because that’s what people think lawyers do,” says Michael Burger ’03, the center’s executive director.

Instead, the center is a think-and-do tank that offers a deep bench of experts and a full slate of research in the most pressing areas of law and environment.

“We are at the forefront in developing legal techniques to fight climate change, in analyzing the existing and proposed techniques, and in providing information to lawyers, judges, scholars, advocates, and students around the world,” Gerrard says. “And I think it’s fair to say that we’re the leading climate law center in the world at an academic institution.”

Resources for Environmental Lawyer-Leaders 

The center publishes 12 different databases tracking climate-related lawsuits, legislation, and regulation. It is perhaps best known for its global climate change litigation database, which Gerrard says is used by virtually every lawyer involved in climate change. “We’re always told that it’s an indispensable service.” 

Not only does the litigation database provide information for academic studies, Gerrard adds, but “it’s extremely valuable to anybody litigating a climate case to understand immediately what else is being done. We’re very, very proud of that work product. It’s world famous, literally.” 

For Columbia Law students, Gerrard teaches courses on environmental law, energy regulation, and climate change law. The center offers summer internships, pro bono opportunities, and positions as research assistants. That creates a cohort of lawyers focused on environmental law. Gerrard and Burger both serve on the board of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. 

“There is a community of law students in each class who are deeply involved and interested in environmental law and climate change, and all of them become involved in one way or another with our work,” Gerrard says.

Sabin Center fellowships also provide a launching pad for environmental law careers. A strong contingent of former fellows came to the center’s 15th anniversary celebration in February. “The people who have gone on to other positions in the field are a big part of our contribution,” Burger says. “They are in practice, including in leadership positions, in federal and state agencies, at environmental organizations, and in academia, philanthropy, and climate finance.” 

As the Sabin Center’s team has expanded to nearly two dozen staff members and fellows, its mission has also grown. While some projects, such as work on island nations threatened by rising sea levels, date back to the center’s beginnings, the center’s focus has widened to include energy law, environmental and land-use regulation, and human rights and climate change. 

“We’ve kind of shifted from ‘We’re going to write papers about the Clean Air Act’ … to ‘We’re going to think strategically about where there are gaps that we can meaningfully fill in our think-and-do tank role,’” Burger says. 

The Sabin Center is now also an affiliate of Columbia’s four-year-old Climate School, and Gerrard holds a joint appointment there as Professor of Professional Practice.   

New projects at the center emerge from “our perception of where the gap is and what needs to happen,” Burger says. What the center calls “cross-cutting initiatives” involve working with researchers, faculty, and organizations outside the Law School “to try and drive change in specific areas,” he says. “That’s really where the action is now.” 

For example, the center has joined with the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment for the Climate Law and Finance Initiative, which will support research on issues including financing the transition to renewable energy, how government regulation can speed that transition, and metrics for assessing financial institutions’ progress on climate goals. And as cities and states began to set emissions reductions targets, the center created the Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative to work with localities around the country to overcome pushback to increasing renewable energy sources.

“We need massive amounts of new infrastructure for the energy transition in this country. There’s going to be local opposition everywhere you go,” Burger says.

Navigating Political Resistance  

Since its founding, the center has persevered through three presidential administrations with dramatically different attitudes toward the climate crisis. 

“There’s certainly been a great deal of positive legal development in the fight against climate change. Many additional constituencies are involved. Many new technologies have been developed,” Gerrard says. “But at the same time, there are powerful forces pushing in the other direction.” 

The center’s initial focus, in the early days of the Obama administration, was a federal energy bill that would have established an emissions trading system. The proposed legislation died in Congress; the center worked instead to defend Obama-era environmental regulation through amicus briefs. When the Trump administration sought to roll back environmental measures, the center launched a “climate deregulation tracker” and a “silencing science” tracker to monitor government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education, or discussion.

“On the day that Biden was inaugurated, we rebranded the deregulation tracker as the Climate Reregulation Tracker,” Gerrard says. 

The issue of climate change remains highly partisan. “The U.S. Republican Party is the only major political party in the world that, as a matter of doctrine, denies action on climate change,” says Gerrard. “The ferocious, organized opposition to action on climate change has been very frustrating—and prevents the world from achieving the kind of momentum we really need.”

The obstacles to progress on decarbonization and other climate action mean that, in its next 15 years, the Sabin Center will need to focus on adaptation to the effects of climate change in addition to efforts to forestall it, Gerrard says. He anticipates more projects like the center’s work with New York utility provider Con Edison in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, when the center was part of a successful effort to get the utility to conduct a climate change vulnerability study and implement its recommendations. The center is also looking at emerging issues such as the high energy consumption of data centers for artificial intelligence, “which has the potential to mess a lot of things up,” Gerrard says. “We very much have our eyes open for new challenges.”

One lesson that Gerrard learned during his days in the private sector still applies to the current work of the Sabin Center. In his litigation practice, “any legal analysis that I was going to do was going to be viciously attacked by the other side. So it had to be good,” he says. Today, the center’s research has to be of equally high quality. “Because we’re not just putting it out into the ether. There are people who don’t like this stuff that are going to attack us,” Gerrard says. “So it has to stand up.”