Jonathan B. Wiener is the William R. Perkins Professor of Law, and Professor of Environmental Policy and of Public Policy, at Duke University’s Law, Nicholas and Sanford schools, where he teaches courses on Space Law, Climate Law, Environmental Law, and Risk Regulation; a member of the Steering Board of the Duke SPACE Initiative; and co-director of the Duke Center on Risk in the Science & Society Initiative. He is a Past President of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), a University Fellow of Resources for the Future (RFF), a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), and an advisory board member of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA), the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity, the Climate Economics Chair (CEC) in Paris, and the RAND Feinberg Center on Catastrophic Risk and Compensation Systems.
His publications include the articles “Interplanetary Risk Regulation” (2025, with Chase Hamilton) and “Multi-Risk Governance of Solar Radiation Modification” (2025, with Tyler Felgenhauer and Mark Borsuk); and the books Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after … Crises (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017, with Ed Balleisen, Lori Bennear, and Kim Krawiec); The Reality of Precaution: Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and Europe (RFF/Routledge, 2011, with Michael Rogers, Jim Hammitt, and Peter Sand); Reconstructing Climate Policy (AEI Press 2003, with Richard Stewart); and Risk vs. Risk (Harvard Univ. Press 1995, with John Graham).
He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 5th Assessment Report (2014), Working Group III, co-author of chapter 13 on “International Cooperation: Agreements and Institutions.” Before coming to Duke, he served in the US Government, at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), and the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA); he helped draft the first IPCC report (1990), helped negotiate the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) and attended the Rio Earth Summit (1992), helped draft Executive Order 12866 (1993), and helped launch the Americorps National Service program (1993). He was a law clerk for then-Judge Stephen G. Breyer on the US Court of Appeals in Boston, and for Judge Jack B. Weinstein on the US District Court in New York. He received degrees in economics and in law from Harvard University.