Jonathan B. Wiener
William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law
Professor of Environmental Policy
Professor of Public Policy Studies
Jonathan B. Wiener is the William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law at Duke Law School, Professor of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment, and Professor of Public Policy Studies at the Sanford School of Public Policy, at Duke University.
In 2008, Jonathan Wiener served as President of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). He is the first law professor or lawyer to hold this post. In 2003 he received the Chauncey Starr Young Risk Analyst Award from the SRA for the most exceptional contributions to the field of risk analysis by a scholar aged 40 or under. Since 2002 he has also been a University Fellow of Resources for the Future (RFF), the environmental economics think tank.
He has been a visiting professor at: Sciences Po (2008), the University of Chicago Law School (2007), l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and le Centre International de Recherche sur L'Environnement et le Développement (CIRED) in Paris (2005-06), and Harvard Law School (1999). He has taught courses on Environmental Law, Risk Regulation in the US and Europe, Climate Change, Mass Torts, International Environmental Law, Property Law, and Global Property Regimes.
From 2000-05 he served as the founding Faculty Director of the Duke Center for Environmental Solutions, now expanded into the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, of which he is now chair of the faculty oversight committee.
Professor Wiener has written widely on U.S., European, and international environmental law and risk regulation, including the books The Reality of Precaution (forthcoming), Reconstructing Climate Policy (AEI Press 2003, with Richard B. Stewart) and Risk vs. Risk (Harvard University Press 1995, with John D. Graham), and articles in diverse journals including the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, U. Penn. Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Ecology Law Quarterly, Current Legal Problems, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Risk Analysis, Journal of Risk Research, Risk: Health Safety & Environment, Technology in Society, Conservation Biology, and Human and Experimental Toxicology.
Before coming to Duke, he worked on U.S. and international environmental policy at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and at the US Department of Justice, serving in both the first Bush and Clinton administrations. He helped negotiate the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. In 1993 he helped draft Executive Order 12866 on Regulatory Review.
Professor Wiener clerked for Judge (now U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in 1988-89, and for Chief Judge Jack B. Weinstein on the U.S. District Court in New York in 1987-88. He received his A.B. in economics (1984) and J.D. (1987) from Harvard University, where he was a research assistant at the NBER , an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and assistant coach of the 1985 intercollegiate debate champions.
Jonathan Wiener also helped organize the Americorps National Service program in 1993, helped start the annual City Year servathon in Boston in 1989 and the D.C. Cares servathon in Washington D.C. in 1991, served on the North Carolina State Commission on National and Community Service from 1994-98, and founded the "Dedicated to Durham" community service day held twice each year at Duke Law School since 1995.