Peter L Strauss

Peter L. Strauss (born February 26, 1940) is the Betts Professor of Law Emeritus at Columbia Law School. He joined the faculty in 1971. He teaches courses in Administrative Law, Legal Methods, and Legislation, and the Regulatory State.

After graduating Harvard College (1961) and Yale Law School (1964), he had spent two years clerking for federal judges in Washington, D.C., two years lecturing on criminal law in the national university of Ethiopia, and three years as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General, briefing and arguing cases before the United States Supreme Court. During 1975-77, Professor Strauss was on leave from Columbia as the first General Counsel of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. His published works include Administrative Justice in the United States (1989 and 2002); Gellhorn's & Byse's Administrative Law: Cases and Comments (most recently, 2011, with Rakoff, Farina and Metzger); Legal Methods: Understanding and Using Cases and Statutes (2005, 2008, and 2014); Legislation, Understanding and Using Statutes (2006), Administrative Law Stories (2006) and numerous law review articles, generally focusing on issues of rulemaking, separation of powers, and statutory interpretation.

In 1987 the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association presented to Professor Strauss its third annual award for distinguished scholarship in administrative law. In 1992-93, he served as Chair of the Section. He has been reporter for rulemaking on its APA and European Union Administrative Law projects, and was a member of its E-Rulemaking task force. He has twice been Vice Dean at Columbia. Professor Strauss has visited at the European University Institute, Harvard and NYU, and lectured widely on American administrative law abroad, including programs in Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Turkey and Venezuela. In 2008, the American Constitution Society awarded him the first Richard Cudahy prize for his essay "Overseer or 'The Decider'? The President in Administrative Law." During 2008-09 he was Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European Law Institute and Parsons fellow at the University of Sydney Law School. He is also a member of the board of the Law School's Public Interest Law Foundation, a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.