Margot J. Pollans

  • Professor of Law
  • Faculty Director, Pace Food Law Center
  • Joseph P. D’Alessandro Faculty Scholar
Preston Hall 211
Monday and Wednesday 11:00 - 12:00
Assistant: Kathy Martins
Preston Hall 201-207
(914) 422-4194

Education

BA, Columbia University
JD, New York University School of Law
L.L.M. Georgetown University Law Center

For media inquiries, contact:

Rachael Silva
Assistant Dean for External Affairs
(914) 422-4354

Professor Margot Pollans joined Haub Law’s faculty in 2015. She is the Faculty Director of the Pace Food Law Center and served as the Shamik and Adrienne Trivedi Faculty Scholar from 2020-2022. She teaches several classes including Agriculture Law and the Environment, Food Systems and the Environment Law, and Environmental Law Survey.

During her time at Haub Law she has been a leader in building the national reputation of the Pace Food Law Center. She is also part of the Farm Bill Law Enterprise, a national partnership of law school programs working toward a farm bill that reflects the long-term needs of our society, including economic opportunity and stability, public health and nutrition, climate change mitigation and adaptation, public resources stewardship, and racial and socioeconomic justice.

Professor Pollans is an accomplished scholar whose primary research interests lie in the areas of food and agriculture law, administrative law and social justice. Her academic work has appeared in a variety of journals including in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. She is also the co-author of a casebook, Food Law: Cases & Materials. In 2022, she was named the recipient of Haub Law’s distinguished Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship for her article, "Eaters, Powerless by Design" published by Michigan Law Review (120 Mich. L. Rev. 643 (2022)).

Before joining Haub Law, Professor Pollans was the inaugural academic fellow at UCLA School of Law’s Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy. Previously, she was a Staff Attorney and Clinical Teaching Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public Representation, where she worked on a range of environmental litigation and supervised student clinicians. Following law school, Pollans clerked for the Honorable David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In 2017 she was named “40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Food Policy” by the NYC Food Policy Center.

Publications

SSRN

Articles

FDA as Food System Steward, Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2021) (with Matthew Watson)

Eaters: Powerless by Design, 120 Mich. L. Rev. 643 (2022).

The Right Family, 39 Colum. J. Gender & L. 1 (2020) (with Noa Ben-Asher).

The New Food Safety, 107 Calif. L. Rev. 1173 (2019) (with Emily Broad Leib).

Drinking Water Protection and Agricultural Exceptionalism, 77 Ohio St. L.J. 1195 (2016).

Regulating Farming: Balancing Food Safety and Environmental Protection in a Cooperative Governance Regime, 50 Wake Forest L. Rev. 399 (2015).

A “Blunt Withdrawal”? Bars on Citizen Suits for Toxic Site Cleanup, 37 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 441 (2013).

Note, Bundling Public and Private Goods: The Market for Sustainable Organics, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 621 (2010).

Books, Book Chapters, and Symposium Pieces

Food Law and Policy: Cases and Materials (Wolters Kluwer 2018) (with Jacob Gersen & Michael Roberts).

Farming and Eating, 13 J. of Food Law & Pol’y 99 (2017) (invited contribution to special issue on Food Policy in the Trump Era).

Ecolabeling, in OXFORD HANDBOOK OF COMPARATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW (Emma Lees & Jorge E. Viñuales eds., 2019) (with Jason Czarnezki & Sarah Main).

Food Systems, in CLIMATE CHANGE, PUBLIC HEALTH, AND THE LAW (Michael Berger & Justin Gundlach, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018).

The Safe Drinking Water Act/Food Law Nexus, 32 Pace Envtl. L. Rev.  501 (2015) (invited contribution to symposium issue).

Setting the Table for Urban Agriculture, 46 Urb. Law. 199 (2014) (with Michael Roberts), also published in Urban Agriculture: Policy, Law, Strategy, and Implementation (Martha H. Chumbler, Lawrence Bechler, & Sorell Negro, eds. 2015).

Popular Press

Oped, “Everything Wrong With Our Food System Has Been Made Worse by Coronovirus,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2020,

Letter to the Editor, “A Farming Revolution, Minus Factories,” New York Times, Oct. 3, 2016,

Oped, “The Labeling Shortcut,” Slate, May 5, 2016,