Sheila R. Foster is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Urban Law and Policy at Georgetown. She holds a joint appointment with the Georgetown Law School and the McCourt Public Policy School. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a University Professor and the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law at Fordham University. She also co-directed the Fordham Urban Law Center and was a founder of the Fordham University Urban Consortium. Prior to joining Fordham, she was a Professor of Law at the Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey.
Sheila is the author of numerous publications on environmental law, and is one of the country’s leading scholars on environmental justice. She is co-author of the classic text From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press 2001) (with Luke Cole) and co-editor of The Law of Environmental Justice: Theories and Procedures to Address Disproportionate Risks (American Bar Association 2009) (with Michael Gerrard). Over the last two decades, Sheila has worked with government agencies, non-government organizations, scholars, and policymakers to reform environmental and land use policies and practices consistent with the principles of environmental justice. In 2018, she received the Senior Scholarship Award from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Academy of Environmental Law
Sheila’s most recent work explores city growth and governance through the lens of the “commons,” bringing the analytical lens of her environmental law and policy to the city and the management of urban resources. Her latest article, The City as a Commons, is published in the Yale Law and Policy Review (with Christian Iaione) and is the basis of a forthcoming book Co-Cities for MIT Press. Sheila has been involved on many levels with environmental and urban policy. She was a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (co-chair of the working group on community-based assessments of vulnerability), is chair of the advisory committee of the Global Parliament of Mayors, and an advisory board member of the Marron Institute for Urban Management at NYU.