Jonathan B. Wiener, JD

Co-Director, Duke Center on Risk
Duke University

Professor of Environmental Policy
Duke University

Professor of Public Policy
Duke University

William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law
Duke University

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 at the Sanford School of Public Policy, at Duke University. He is Co-Director of the Duke Center on Risk, and previously the Rethinking Regulation program at Duke. From 2007-15 he served as the director of the JD-LLM Program in International and Comparative Law at Duke Law School.  From 2000-05 he was the founding Faculty Director of the Duke Center for Environmental Solutions, which became the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability.

 

In 2008, he served as President of the international Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).  In 2003 he received the SRA’s Chauncey Starr Young Risk Analyst.  In 2012 he co-chaired the SRA's World Congress on Risk in Sydney Australia. In 2014 he received the SRA’s Richard J. Burk Outstanding Service Award.  Since 2002 he has been a University Fellow of Resources for the Future (RFF).  Since 2019 he has been a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS).  In 2020-22, he served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (SBCA). He is a member of advisory committees of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity, and the Chaire Economie du Climat.  In 2015 he was a member of the Special Policy Study team on “Environmental Risk Management” for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). He was a chapter lead author for the IPCC, 5th Assessment Report, Working Group III, Chapter 13, “International Cooperation: Agreements and Institutions” (2014).  He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and several universities in Paris.  

His publications include the books Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation After Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017, with Ed Balleisen, Lori Bennear, and Kim Krawiec); The Reality of Precaution: Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and Europe (RFF Press/Earthscan, 2011, with Michael Rogers, James Hammitt, and Peter Sand), Reconstructing Climate Policy (AEI Press 2003, with Richard B. Stewart) and Risk vs. Risk (Harvard Univ. Press 1995, with John D. Graham), and more than 100 articles in diverse journals in law, policy, economics, risk, and science.

 

Before coming to Duke in 1994, he served at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Environment and Natural Resources Division, during both the first Bush and Clinton administrations. He helped draft the first IPCC report (1990), helped negotiate the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1990-92), attended the Rio Earth Summit (1992), and helped draft Executive Order 12866 on Regulatory Review (1993).  He clerked for Judge (later 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, EDNY in 1987-88. He received his A.B. in economics (1984) and J.D. (1987) from Harvard University.