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Shelley Welton: Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy

caption: Shelley WeltonShelley Welton has accepted an appointment at the University of Pennsylvania as a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy. From decarbonization in a democracy to clean energy justice, Dr. Welton’s legal research focuses on how climate change is transforming energy and environmental law.

Dr. Welton’s faculty appointment is at Penn Carey Law, where she will hold an affiliation with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy in the Weitzman School as part of President Amy Gutmann’s 2019 commitment to building a multidisciplinary energy policy faculty affiliated with the Kleinman Center.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be joining Penn Carey Law and the Kleinman Center. I look forward to collaborating across the University to enhance Penn’s leadership in climate and energy scholarship, policymaking, and education,” said Dr. Welton.

Dr. Welton will start her tenure at Penn in the fall of 2022. This year, she is already connecting with Penn faculty and students by participating in law school seminars; she will also serve in the spring as a Kleinman Center visiting scholar. Starting next fall, she will teach environmental law and host an advanced climate and energy seminar at Penn Carey Law in addition to her Energy and Climate course at the Kleinman Center. 

“In her work, Shelley explores the relationship of law to real-world environmental challenges and imagines meaningful solutions,” said Fritz Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor at Weitzman.  

Dr. Welton will be the second faculty research appointment at the Kleinman Center, following the 2020 hiring of carbon capture expert Jennifer Wilcox (Almanac September 15, 2020), who is now on leave at the Department of Energy. Both appointments are possible due to an anonymous $30 million gift to the Kleinman Center in 2019, as well as generous University support.

Dr. Welton comes to Penn from the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she has taught administrative law, energy law, environmental law and policy, and climate change law. Her scholarship has appeared in publications like the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review. Before entering academia, Dr. Welton worked as the deputy director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She also was a clerk for Judge David Trager of the Eastern District of New York and Judge Allyson Duncan of the Fourth Circuit.

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