The Climate Lawyer Within: Mobilising the Legal Community

John C. Dernbach is Professor Emeritus at Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and founding director of its Environmental Law and Sustainability Center. He writes widely on sustainable development, climate change law, environmental law, and constitutional environmental law. His scholarship and advocacy were cited extensively in landmark Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions in 2013 and 2017 that reinvigorated the state constitution’s Environmental Rights Amendment. He is also a co-editor of The Public Trust Doctrine in Environmental and Natural Resources Law (4 th ed. 2025), with Michael Blumm and Mary Wood. Professor Dernbach is the principal author, editor, or co-editor of four books assessing and making recommendations on U.S. progress toward sustainability; the latest is Governing for Sustainability (Environmental Law Institute 2023; co-edited with Scott Schang).

He is coauthor, with Matt Bogoshian and Irma Russell, of Sustainability Essentials: Lawyering to Make a Difference (American Bar Association 2022). He is also co-editor, with Michael Gerrard, of Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (2019), a comprehensive analysis and description of more than 1,000 legal tools for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
Prior to joining the Widener faculty, he was the principal drafter of four major waste and mining laws at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (now the Department of Environmental Protection). He received a J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan and a B.S. summa cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Bar Association’s Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy.

Michael Gerrard is Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on environmental and energy law. He founded and directs the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which now has 17 lawyers and is the leading academic center on climate change law in the world. He is a former Chair of the Faculty of Columbia’s Earth Institute and now holds a joint appointment to the faculty of its successor, the Columbia Climate School. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 2009, he was partner in charge of the New York office of the Arnold & Porter law firm. He practiced environmental law in New York City full time from 1979 through 2008. He was the 2004-2005 chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He has also chaired the Executive Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Since 1986, Gerrard has written an environmental law column for the New York Law Journal. He is author or editor of fourteen books, two of which were named Best Law Book of the Year by the Association of American Publishers: Environmental Law Practice Guide (twelve volumes, 1992) and Brownfields Law and Practice (four volumes, 1998). Among his other books are Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (with Jody Freeman and Michael Burger) (3d ed. 2023); Threatened Island Nations: Legal Implications of Rising Seas and a Changing Climate (with Gregory Wannier, 2013); and Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United
States (with John Dernbach 2019).