Register today for the last seminar of the ESE Spring 2026 Seminar Series: The Janak Raj Lectures. This seminar is available online only via Zoom. 

Lecture by Speaker:
Daniel Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law Faculty Director, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, University of California Berkeley

REGISTER HERE

TIME: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Eastern Time 
LOCATION - ZOOM MEETING link to be sent prior to the seminar date
CONTACT US: inesei@lehigh.edu      

ABSTRACT: This talk provides a systems analysis of climate change policy, which links together subsystems relating to innovation policy, energy economics, interest group politics, and government regulation.  It is easy but misleading to equate climate policy with emissions regulation. That is too narrow a frame. We urgently need a new energy system because of climate change, but regulating carbon emissions is only one part of a bigger project. We cannot assume that as carbon emissions decline a new energy system will build itself – nor will society be willing to eliminate fossil fuels without confidence in their replacements.

BIO: Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He also has leadership roles at two Berkeley research centers: The Center for Law, Energy, and Environment; and The Edley Center on Law and Democracy. Professor Farber is a member of the American Academy of Arts.
Professor Farber is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees. He graduated, summa cum laude, from the College of Law, where he was the class valedictorian and served as editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. After law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Philip W. Tone of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Farber practiced law with Sidley & Austin, where he primarily worked on energy issues, before returning to the University of Illinois as a faculty member in 1978. He taught at the University of Minnesota Law School faculty from 1981 to 2002, where he was the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law. He also has been a visiting professor at the Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School.
His most recent book is Contested Ground: How to Understand the Limits on Presidential Power (UC Press 2021). His earlier books include Research Handbook on Public Choice and Public Law (Elgar 2010) (with A. O’Connell); Judgment Calls: Politics and Principle in Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2008) (with S. Sherry); Retained by the People: The “Silent” Ninth Amendment and the Rights Americans Don’t Know They Have (Basic Books 2007); Lincoln’s Constitution (University of Chicago Press 2003); and Eco-Pragmatism: How to Make Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World (University of Chicago Press 1999).
Education: B.A., University of Illinois (1971); M.A., University of Illinois (1972); J.D., University of Illinois (1975)