Hari M. Osofsky is the Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and a Professor of Environmental Policy and Culture (courtesy) at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is the inaugural Director of the Northwestern University Energy Innovation Lab, which brings together the expertise of the scientists and engineers who reimagine technology with that of bipartisan leaders and scholars across disciplines to advance needed energy innovation. At this critical moment of disruption in the energy industry, the Lab’s initial projects aim to make progress on how rapidly evolving technology, regulation, and investment can most effectively optimize energy use in data centers and shape the use of AI throughout the energy system – including with respect to private-sector satellite data and potential space energy systems – to promote new efficiencies and breakthroughs. She also serves as the inaugural Director of the Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership, a collaboration of over 150 law schools from six continents that is advancing nonpartisan civic education, research, teaching, and programming. Its initial projects focus on judicial independence and separation of powers, the role of lawyers and legal representation, the role of universities and academic freedom, and due process.
Professor Osofsky’s over 50 publications focus on improving governance and addressing injustice in energy and climate change regulation. Her scholarship includes books with Cambridge University Press on climate change litigation, textbooks on both energy and climate change law, and articles in leading law and geography journals. She is currently working on interdisciplinary projects on data center energy optimization, new patterns of energy investment driven by the rapid development of AI and cryptocurrency, the geopolitics of AI and energy, and the interface of energy and AI with the growing private-sector space industry. Professor Osofsky’s Emory Law Journal article, Energy Partisanship, was awarded the 2018 Morrison Prize, which recognizes the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year. Professor Osofsky has collaborated extensively with business, government, and nonprofit leaders to make bipartisan progress on these issues through her leadership roles and teaching. She is a member of the American Law Institute, fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and life fellow of the American Bar Foundation. The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center recognized her as one of the 2019 Women of Legal Tech.
Prior to leading the Energy Innovation Lab and Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership at Northwestern University, Professor Osofsky was Dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law from 2021 to 2025. As Dean, she hired over two dozen outstanding faculty members, including nearly a quarter of the Research Faculty. The Law School grew in interdisciplinary strength with its first joint hires with the Feinberg School of Medicine and Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and new interdisciplinary appointments for numerous faculty members; rebuilt its junior faculty and created new programs to support them; and reconstituted its Visiting Assistant Professor program with a gift establishing the Marti Family Fellowship. She fundraised over $51 million, including major gifts supporting three new endowed chairs, significant expansion of student scholarships, and the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Seigle Clinic for Immigrant Youth and Families, Carter G. Phillips Center for Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy, and new LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic. Under her leadership and with the support of philanthropy, the Law School launched numerous other new programs and centers, including the West Coast Initiative, Center for Racial and Disability Justice, and Rivkin Law and Public Advocacy Fellows Program. The Law School made significant improvements in student employment outcomes; it was ranked the #1 Go-To Law School for Big Law two years in a row (among its substantial gains in multiple rankings), achieved its most successful year ever in judicial clerkship placement, and developed substantial new resources for public interest students. The Law School recruited its most selective J.D. class in its 165-year history each year she was Dean and in fall 2024, also had its highest percentage of first-generation college students and most diverse class. It developed innovative programs to support access to education and dialogue across difference, including the First-Generation Pre-Law Conference, Knox Conversations, The Perspective Project pre-orientation program, and a Writing Lab and bar support program. The Law School also launched several new alumni groups, including the Council of Judges, Alumni in Academia, Alumni Affinity Groups, and Northwestern Lawyers.
Before joining Northwestern University, Professor Osofsky served as Dean of Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs from 2017 to 2021. Under her leadership, the two schools made co-hires with the College of Medicine, College of Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Rock Ethics Institute, and Institutes of Energy and the Environment. They launched a Law, Policy, and Engineering Initiative and Center for Energy Law and Policy, formed health partnerships involving numerous units; created the award-winning Legal-Tech Virtual Lab; and developed new collaborative master’s programs, an individualized joint degree program, integrated undergraduate/graduate programs, and an accelerated bachelor’s/J.D. program. She fundraised Penn State Law’s first million-dollar gift; formed partnerships resulting in gifts from technology companies, such as Microsoft; increased size, diversity, philanthropy, and engagement of Board of Advisors and Alumni Society Board and created Development Council; and used digital research to launch the Penn State Lawyers Network. Penn State Law significantly improved its admissions credentials, employment outcomes, and rankings – moving up 22 spots – and both schools expanded their academic programs and took concrete action to create a welcoming and supportive community. Penn State Law established the most international MOUs of any unit at Penn State, grew its LL.M. program in size and geographic diversity, and created a new Legal English certificate program in Panama. In both deanships, Professor Osofsky helped the schools navigate the COVID-19 crisis and was deeply involved nationally in mentoring and sponsoring prospective academic leaders and faculty.
Professor Osofsky also served on the faculties of University of Minnesota Law School, Washington and Lee University School of Law, the University of Oregon School of Law, and Whittier Law School. At the University of Minnesota, she was the Robins Kaplan Professor at the Law School and had appointments in Geography, Environment and Society, the Conservation Sciences Graduate Program, and the Institute on the Environment. She served as founding director of the University of Minnesota Energy Transition Lab and led the Joint Degree Program in Law, Science, and Technology. Professor Osofsky received a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oregon and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
