Melissa Luttrell, JD

Bio
Professor Luttrell was in private practice in Los Angeles, where her work included representing hospitals in complex civil litigation in state and federal court. Earlier in her career, she served as Legislative Counsel for Regulatory Affairs at Public Citizen's Congress Watch. Her scholarship considers the appropriate use of microeconomic principles in legal decisions that relate to environmental and public health risk regulation; the ways decision makers actually use available evidence, in the absence of perfect information; and the integration of idealistic notions of what protective environmental and public health laws can and should do with the pragmatic realities of the world that actually exists.
Publications
Law Reviews
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The Social Cost of Inertia: How Cost-Benefit Incoherence Threatens to Derail U.S. Climate Action, 25 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y Forum 131 (2014).
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Bentham at the OMB: A Response to Professor Rowell, 64 Admin. L. Rev. 1013 (2012).
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The Case for Differential Discounting: How a Small Rate Change Could Help Agencies Save More Lives and Make More Sense, 3 Wm. & Mary Pol’y Rev. 80 (2011).
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Clarifying Entrapment, (with Ronald Allen Anne Kreeger) 89 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 407 (1999).
Courses Taught
- Environmental Law
- Seminar
- Property
- Climate Change
Professional Affiliations
- Massachusetts Bar Association
- California Bar Association
Awards & Honors
- Order of the Coif
- Dean’s List