Professor Peter L. Strauss

Peter L. Strauss is the Betts Professor of Law Emeritus at Columbia Law School. He has taught courses in administrative law, legal education, legal methods, legislation, and the regulatory state. He joined the faculty in 1971, twice served as vice dean, and became emeritus July 1, 2017.

He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1964 and his A.B. from Harvard College in 1961. Before joining the Law School, he clerked for David L. Bazelon and William J. Brennan in Washington, D.C.; spent 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 U.S. Supreme Court. During 1975 to 1977, Strauss was on leave from Columbia as the first general counsel of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In 1987, the American Bar Association's section of administrative law and regulatory practice presented Strauss with its third annual award for distinguished scholarship in administrative law. From 1992 to 1993, he served as chair of the section. He has been a reporter for rulemaking on its APA and European Union administrative law projects, and was a member of its E-Rulemaking task force. 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.”  His faculty honored him with a festschrift in 2015, 115 Colum. L. Rev. 1675-2070 (2015).

Strauss has been a visitor at the European University Institute, Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law, and New York University, and has lectured widely on American administrative law abroad, including programs in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Turkey, and Venezuela. During 2008 to 2009, he was Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European Law Institute and Parsons Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School.

A life member of the American Law Institute, Strauss was elected in 2010 to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has also long been a faculty member on the board of the Law School's Public Interest Law Foundation.