David A. Dana

About

David A. Dana is a leading scholar in the fields of environmental law, property, land use, and professional responsibility. He holds the position of Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and is also a Professor of Real Estate at the Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy). He serves as the Director of the Program on Sustainability and Food and Animal Law. Before joining Northwestern, he was a litigator in both the private sector at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and in the public sector at the U.S. Department of Justice. Dana has taught at Boston University and has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Virginia, and several foreign universities. His work on the Takings Clause has been widely cited, as has his writing on the ethics of aggregate legal representation. His current scholarly work focuses on environmental and health risks posed by emerging technologies, climate change adaptation, the foreclosure crisis, and attorney fees and fee alternatives.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Law and economics
• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Geology
• Environmental ethics
• Economics
• Oceanography

Selected publications

• Framing of Geoengineering Affects Support for Climate Change Mitigation

  Environmental Communication · 2019-03-25 · 68 citations

  article

  The growing recognition that climate change mitigation alone will be inadequate has led scientists and policymakers to discuss climate geoengineering. An experiment with a US sample found, contrary to previous research, that reading about geoengineering did not reduce conservatives’ skepticism about the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, depending on how it is framed, geoengineering can reduce support for mitigation among both conservatives and non-conservatives. When geoengine…

  PublisherDOI

• Regulation, Public Attitudes, and Private Governance

  Journal of Empirical Legal Studies · 2019-01-09 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Corporate adoption of politically contestable practices (e.g., sustainable forestry; cage‐free eggs) is increasingly common. In two studies, we empirically explore the relationship between corporate practices and subsequent public support for legislation mandating such practices. One hypothesis is that public support for new legislation decreases following corporate action because the private sector is perceived to be adequately managing the problem, thus obviating the need for a legislative res…

  PublisherDOI

• Climate Geoengineering: Science, Law and Governance

  AESS interdisciplinary environmental studies and sciences series · 2021 · 4 citations

  PublisherDOI

• The New “Contractarian” Paradigm in Environmental Regulation

  2018-01-12 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In response to criticism of the traditional command-and-control approach to environmental regulation, state and federal regulators have created a “contractarian” approach. More specifically, contractarian environmental regulation consists of an arrangement in which regulators agree not to enforce various laws applicable to regulated entities in exchange for the entities’ agreements to fulfill additional obligations not required by existing law. In this article, Professor Dana argues that the con…

  PublisherDOI

• Individual autonomy and takings in a liberal theory of property

  International Journal of Law in Context · 2022 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Barsa

  Northwestern University

  12 shared

• Yitzhak Mastai

  Bar-Ilan University

  6 shared

• Susan P. Koniak

  6 shared

• Janice Nadler

  4 shared

• Michael P. Vandenbergh

  Vanderbilt University

  3 shared

• Hannah Jacobs Wiseman

  Pennsylvania State University

  3 shared

• Wil Burns

  Northwestern University

  3 shared

• George M. Cohen

  University of Virginia

  3 shared

Labs

• Center on Law, Business, and EconomicsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Law

  University of Chicago

  1980

• Other, Law

  University of Chicago

  1977

• B.A., Political Science

  University of Chicago

  1974

Awards & honors

• Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Seema K. Shahh-126
• Darren Greenh-78
• Joshua Jack Jonesh-67