Katrina Fischer Kuh, Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law

Katrina Fischer Kuh

Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law
Class of 2013 Faculty Scholar
Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Environmental Law
White Plains
Preston Hall, 221 |
By Appointment Only
Faculty Assistant
Lorraine Rubich

Biography

Katrina Fischer Kuh joined the Elisabeth Haub School of Law faculty as the Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law in 2017. She was previously on the faculty at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where she was a Professor of Law and served as an Associate Dean of Intellectual Life. Professor Kuh’s scholarship focuses on climate change and sustainability, and she has taught Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, Administrative Law, and Torts. She is the co-editor of The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change: United States and International Aspects and Climate Change Law: An Introduction.

Before entering academia, Professor Kuh worked in the environmental and litigation practice groups in the New York office of Arnold & Porter LLP and served as an advisor on natural resource policy in the U.S. Senate. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale and served as a law clerk to Judge Charles S. Haight of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Education

  • BA, Yale College (summa cum laude)
  • JD, Yale Law School

Selected Publications

View all of Professor Kuh’ publications on SSRN, Digital Commons or download her CV (PDF).

  • Eco-Necrotourism and Public Land Management: Last Chance Tourism, Ecological Grief, and the World’s Disappearing Natural Wonders, 51 Fla. St. L. Rev. 133 (2024) (co-author with Robin Craig)
  • “Can the Constitution Save the Planet?” in Democracy in a Hotter Time (D. Orr ed.) (forthcoming 2023) (with James R. May)
  • “Performative Justice,” in Adapting to a 4° World (K. Kuh & S. Roesler eds.) (forthcoming 2023)
  • Informational Regulation, the Environment, and the Public, 105 Marq. L. Rev. 603 (2022)
  • “The International Climate Change Treaty Regime, Litigating Government (In)Action on Climate Change”; and “Legal and Policy Levers to Prompt Action by Private Climate Change Actors,” in Introduction to Climate Change Law (2021)
  • Scientific Gerrymandering & Bifurcation (PDF), 29 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 171 (2021) (with Megan Edwards & Frederick A. McDonald)
  • “Professional Responsibility and the Corporate Hoodwink: Using the Climate Disinformation Campaign to Examine the Ethical Responsibilities of Attorneys When Corporate Clients Mislead the Public to Avoid Government Regulation,” in Environmental Law Disrupted (K. Hirokawa & J. Owley, eds.) (2021) (with Lissa Griffin)
  • The Legitimacy of Judicial Climate Engagement, 46 Ecology L.Q. 731 (2020)
  • Crafting Next Generation Eco-Label Policy, 48 Envtl L 409 (2018) (with Jason J. Czarnezki & K. Ingemar Jonsson)
  • “Agnostic Adaptation,” in A Response to the IPCC Fifth Assessment, 45 ELR 10027 (2015) & Contemporary Issues in Climate Change Law & Policy: Essays Inspired by the IPCC (Robin Kundis Craig & Stephen R. Miller, eds. 2016).
  • Environmental Privacy, 2015 Utah L. Rev. 1 (2015).
  • Personal Environmental Information: The Promise and Perils of the Emerging Capacity to Identify Individual Environmental Harms, 65 Vand. L. Rev. 1565 (2012)
  • When Government Intrudes: Regulating Individual Behaviors that Harm the Environment, 61 Duke L.J. 1111 (2012)
  • Capturing Individual Harms, 35 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 155 (2011)

Honors & Awards

  • Ottinger Award 2019–2020
  • Stegner Center Young Scholar 2013
  • Undergraduate: Charles Garside Award, Howard Roberts Lamar Prize

Areas of Interest

Climate Change, Sustainability, Eco-labeling, Constitutional Environmental Rights

Related News and Stories

In the Media

Professor Katrina Fisher Kuh and Professor James May examine how the Constitution falls short in protecting the environment in an article for Counter Punch.

“Despite the obvious fact that life or liberty cannot exist without functioning ecosystems, courts in the United States do not recognize any federal constitutional environmental rights, even to the extent that an environmental right might be deemed appurtenant to explicitly enshrined constitutional rights,” they write.

In the Media

Professor Katrina Kuh speaks to Governors' Wind Energy Coalition about the Supreme Court appearing to be on the verge of erasing a tool for federal agencies to defend their environmental regulations against legal attack.

“It’s just so unfortunate that we are entering a moment where we are starting to have to respond to the real-world, on-the-ground impacts of climate change,” said Katrina Fischer Kuh, an environmental law professor at Pace University. “It would be great to have a network of expert scientists to help us in this moment, and it feels like we are in the exact opposite place.”