Columbia Law School’s 14th Annual Sabin Colloquium on Innovative Environmental Law Scholarship will allow junior environmental law scholars to present early-stage work and receive constructive feedback from a panel of senior scholars and from each other. It will be held on Zoom on May 21-22, 2026.
Eligible applicants are pre-tenure professors, fellows, visiting assistant professors, and other junior scholars in similar academic positions. Papers on environmental law, energy law, natural resources law or water law are eligible. No junior scholar may participate in the Colloquium more than twice.
The panel will select the proposals for discussion based on the degree of innovation they exhibit, the extent to which they point toward practical solutions to environmental problems, and whether, based on the scholarly and analytical quality of the proposals, they are likely to lead to high-quality work products.
To enter, please submit a cover letter, an outline or concept paper of 5 -15 double-spaced pages, and a C.V. to sabincolloquium@law.columbia.edu by March 15. If an article has already been drafted, please just submit a summary of no more than 15 pages. Footnotes are not expected. Articles that have already been accepted for publication are not eligible. This event is for early-stage work that can still be significantly shaped by the discussion at the Colloquium
Authors of selected papers will be notified by April 15. All Colloquium participants will be expected to participate in the full program the afternoons (ET) of May 21 and 22 and to read and comment on each others’ proposals. In view of the desire to practice what we preach by keeping our carbon footprints low, the Colloquium will be conducted virtually via Zoom.
The senior scholars who will be judging this year’s competition and participating in the workshop are:
- Jonathan Adler — William & Mary Law School
- Vicki Been — New York University Law School
- Michael Gerrard — Columbia Law School
- Gerald Torres — Yale Law School
Michael Gerrard
Michael Gerrard is Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice and founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He is former chair of the faculty of the Columbia Earth Institute and of the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He practiced environmental law full-time in New York from 1979 to 2008, and has written or edited 14 books on environmental law.
