Full Bio
​Cary Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science and the founding Director of the Penn Program on Regulation. He specializes in the study of administrative law and regulatory policy, with an emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alternative processes and strategies and the role of public participation, technology, and business-government relations in policymaking.
The author of more than 300 articles, book chapters, reports, and essays on regulatory law and policy, Coglianese’s book projects have included Achieving Regulatory Excellence, Does Regulation Kill Jobs?, Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation, Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, and Regulation and Regulatory Processes. He has also published research on climate change policy, public participation and transparency in federal rulemaking, the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, voluntary environmental programs, and role of waivers and exemptions in regulatory law.
The founding director of the Penn Program on Regulation, he previously served as the Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs of the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Penn faculty, Coglianese spent a dozen years on the faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where he taught courses in environmental policy, policy analysis, and research methods, founded and chaired the school’s Regulatory Policy Program, and served as an affiliated scholar at the Harvard Law School. He has also served as a visiting law professor at Stanford University and Vanderbilt University.
A Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), a federal agency that develops recommendations for improving the administrative aspects of government, Coglianese previously served for the maximum of three consecutive two-year terms as a Public Member of ACUS and served for five years as the Chair of ACUS’s Rulemaking Committee. He has served as the chair and co-chair of several committees of the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy as well as a member of the Section’s governing Council.
At Penn, he teaches courses in administrative law, environmental law, regulatory law and policy, and policy analysis. The faculty chair of Penn Law’s Government Service and Public Affairs Initiative, he is a faculty affiliate of Penn’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, and the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences. He serves on the advisory committee of Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative and previously served on the Provost’s Academic Planning and Budget Committee. In addition, he serves as the faculty director for and teaches in Penn Law’s executive education program on Regulatory Analysis and Decision-Making and also teaches periodically in Wharton School’s executive education programs.
He is a member of the American Law Institute and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He also founded the Law & Society Association’s international collaborative research network on regulatory governance, served as a founding editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, and created and now advises the daily production of The Regulatory Review, a global online publication covering issues of administrative and regulatory law and policy. He created and hosted the 10-part podcast series, Race and Regulation, focusing on ways that regulation contributes to racial injustice as well as on how regulatory policies can serve to combat inequalities in society.
He served as the chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee that spent 17 months studying the implications for law and regulation of emerging trends in the maritime sector. He previously served as a member of other Academy committees on management-based regulation and on ways to improve federal inspections of offshore oil and gas development.
He was selected to serve as a member of an independent peer review panel providing feedback to the Office of Management and Budget on proposed revisions to its Circular A-4 on regulatory analysis. He has also served on an Aspen Institute panel on energy governance, co-chaired an expert task force on water affordability issues for the American Water Works Association, and chaired a task force on transparency and public participation in rulemaking for the nonprofit organization OMB Watch.
He has provided research and advice on various regulatory issues to the Alberta Energy Regulator (Canada), Environment Canada, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).