Daniel A. Farber

Dan Farber is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. The author of more than two-hundred law review articles and twenty books, his work has spanned a broad range from climate change to the constitutional crisis of the Civil War. In our deeply polarized era, he has argued for pragmatic approaches to hotly debated issues.

Since he began teaching four decades ago, Dan has also been passionate about research and writing on constitutional law. He has tried to present a voice of reason in the heated, often politicized arguments over constitutional issues. He has also been listed as one of the top two scholars in environmental law. Much of his recent environmental law writing focuses on climate change. His efforts in that sphere have intensified since having grandchildren whose futures are at risk from the climate crisis.

Dan received his law degree at the University of Illinois, where he returned to begin his teaching career. In the meantime, he served as a law clerk for Judge Philip Tone on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Justice John Paul Stevens at the U.S. Supreme Court. Before coming to Berkeley, he taught for many years at the University of Minnesota, along with visiting professorships at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

Besides his teaching and scholarship at Berkeley, he also directs the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment (CLEE), and for four years chaired Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group (ERG), a renowned interdisciplinary department. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two socially challenged cats. Follow him on Twitter (@dfarber), his public figure page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/dfarber) and the Legal-Planet.org blog.