The award is “presented annually to an emerging environmental law professor who exhibits scholarly excellence and promise at an early stage in his or her career,” according to the award website.

Environmental law faculty at Pace Haub solicit nominations from law professors throughout the country and select a recipient from that pool of nominations. Rothschild will receive the award and deliver a keynote address on her scholarship as part of the annual Future Environmental Law Professors Workshop at Pace on September 5.

“I am so thrilled to receive the 2025–2026 Pace Haub Environmental Law Distinguished Junior Scholar Award,” Rothschild said. “It is an enormous honor to follow in the footsteps of previous award winners, who are a formidable group of scholars.

“I am also extremely grateful to the faculty at Pace Haub, many of whom provided incredible mentorship to me as I was preparing to transition to legal academia. It will be wonderful to share my recent scholarship with such an outstanding group of environmental law professors and receive their feedback on my work.”

Rothschild’s address at the award presentation will focus on an upcoming article in the Columbia Law Review, “State Climate Superfunds.” As the paper’s abstract explains, “a number of state legislators have recently proposed enacting new laws that would require the companies who have most profited from fossil fuel use to assist in funding climate adaptation projects. Based on prior liability regimes to deal with hazardous waste harms, these ‘state climate superfunds’ will address the unfair distribution of climate adaptation costs and provide an essential complement to regulation of future greenhouse gas emissions.”

The article examines the nature and history of such proposals, discusses the legal issues they raise, and suggests ways they can be structured to withstand legal challenges.

“Professor Rothschild’s interdisciplinary scholarship allows for a unique perspective and approach to environmental law, climate change, and regulatory law and has already influenced the adoption and design of environmental statutes,” said Katrina Fischer Kuh, faculty director of the Environmental Law Program and Haub Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at Pace University. “Our Pace Haub Law community looks forward to welcoming and engaging with Professor Rothschild and learning from her in these subject areas.”

Rothschild’s scholarship combines law, history, and policy. Her recent research examines climate change law as well as the past and present regulation of toxic substances.

Before joining the Michigan Law faculty in 2022, Rothschild was a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity. She is the author of Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and has written numerous articles and essays on pollution problems for academic journals and media outlets. From 2015 to 2017, she was an assistant professor and faculty fellow at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.