Michael Burger

Executive Director, Sabin Center Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School

Michael Burger is the Executive Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and a Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer-at-Law at Columbia Law School, where he oversees a dynamic team of attorneys working to to develop and promulgate legal techniques to combat the climate crisis and advance climate justice, and to train the next generation of leaders in the field. His research and advocacy focus on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote climate change adaptation through pollution control, resource management, land use planning and green finance.

Michael is a co-author of Urban Climate Law (Columbia U Press, 2023), and an editor or co-editor of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (ABA Publishing, 2023); Combating Climate Change with Section 115 of the Clean Air Act: Law and Policy Rationales (Edward Elgar, 2020) and Climate Change, Public Health and the Law (Cambridge U Press, 2018). He is a regent and fellow at the American College of Environmental Lawyers, a member of the Advisory Council at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Advisory Board of Urban Ocean Lab. He is also of counsel at the boutique environmental law firm Sher Edling LLP, which works on high impact climate cases around the country.

Prior to joining the Sabin Center in 2015, he was an associate professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, where he founded and directed the Environmental and Land Use Law Clinical Externship program, and an acting assistant professor of Lawyering at New York University School of Law. He previously served as an attorney in the Environmental Law Division of New York City’s Office of the Corporation Counsel.