Richard Revesz


Richard L. Revesz is the director of the American Law Institute and the Lawrence King Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He served as the Dean of the New York University School of Law from 2002 to 2013. He is one of the nation's leading experts on environmental law, regulatory law, and policy.

Early life and education

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Richard Revesz graduated summa cum laude with a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Princeton University in 1979 after completing a 140-page long senior thesis titled "Energy or Environment? The Tradeoff between Automobile Emissions and Fuel Economy." He then received an M.S. in civil engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He continued his studies at Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of Yale Law Journal, and received a J.D. in 1983. Upon graduation, he clerked first for chief judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, where he met his wife, Vicki Been who was also clerking at the Supreme Court, for justice Harry Blackmun.

Career

Early career

Revesz began his academic career in 1985, joining the faculty of NYU Law School as an assistant professor. By 1990, he was a full professor of law, teaching environmental and administrative law. In 2001, he was named Lawrence King professor of law and, a year later, he succeeded John Sexton as dean. He stepped down as dean after 11 years in May 2013. Revesz also has been a visiting professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

NYU School of Law Dean

During his tenure as dean at NYU Law School, Revesz enhanced the school's historic commitment to public interest law, institutionalizing funding opportunities that enable greater numbers of students to pursue public interest work. He also completed a successful campaign to endow the prestigious Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program, restoring the program to its full strength of 20 full-tuition scholarships a year, and more than tripled the size of the AnBryce Scholarship Program, enabling more students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue a legal education and furthering the institution's mission to promote diversity in the legal profession. Revesz oversaw numerous innovations in the NYU Law curriculum, including the introduction of an administrative and regulatory state course in the first-year and the implementation of a first-year elective. The Jacobson leadership program in law and business was designed to train future entrepreneurs and leaders of business in cooperation with NYU's Stern School of Business and offers a wealth of transactional courses to teach students the art of deal making in a number of industries. Revesz also completed an ambitious capital campaign that raised $415 million to support the institution's educational mission.

American Law Institute Director

In 2014 Revesz was appointed to serve as the Director of the American Law Institute.

Scholarship

An influential thinker in the area of environmental and regulatory law and policy, Revesz has published numerous books and articles in major law reviews and journals, focusing on federalism and environmental regulation, the design of liability rules for environmental protection and the role of cost-benefit analysis in shaping administrative and environmental regulation. His most recent book, Retaking Rationality: How Cost Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, which he co-authored with Michael A. Livermore, argues that the economic analysis of the law could be used by environmentalists and other progressive groups to strengthen environmental and public health policy and regulations.
After the book was published in 2008, Revesz and Livermore co-founded the , a NYU Law-affiliated advocacy organization and think tank dedicated to improving the quality of governmental decision-making. Established in the last few months of George W. Bush's presidency, the institute quickly got in the news for spotlighting the Bush administration's rush to adopt a raft of controversial regulations, known as "midnight regulations". Since then, Revesz has published several op-eds on a variety of environmental and regulatory issues, from the economic costs to offshore oil drilling to sector carbon pricing.
Throughout Revesz's career, he has played an active role in shaping environmental public policy and regulations. He has served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board, among other organizations. In 1994 and 2007, he received the American Bar Association award for best article or book on administrative law and regulatory practice.

Personal life

Richard Revesz lives with his wife, Vicki Been, and their two children in New York City.

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