Rate My Professor Ann Eisenberg

Ann Eisenberg is Professor of Law and Research Director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University College of Law, a position she has held since 2023. Previously, she was Associate Professor (2020-2023) and Assistant Professor (2016-2020) at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she founded and ran the transactional Environmental Law Clinic. Other appointments include Digital Studies Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress (January-July 2022), Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University School of Law (Spring 2021), Land Use & Sustainable Development Law Fellow at WVU College of Law (2014-2016), and Staff Attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (2012-2014). Eisenberg began her post-undergraduate career as a Youth Development Volunteer with the Peace Corps in Morocco (2006-2008). Her research interests center on law and sustainability, with a focus on rural development, property, energy law, and local government law.

Eisenberg received her J.D. cum laude from Cornell Law School in 2012, LL.M. in Energy and Sustainable Development Law from West Virginia University College of Law in 2016, and B.A. in Linguistics and French Cultural Studies from Cornell University in 2006. She is a member of the New York Bar. Key publications include Reviving Rural America: Toward Policies for Resilience (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which received the WVU College of Law's 2025 Faculty Significant Scholarship Award; "Distributive Justice and Rural America," 61 B.C. L. Rev. 189 (2020); "Just Transitions," 92 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2 (2019); "Rural Blight," 13 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 187 (2018); "Economic Regulation and Rural America," 98 Wash. U. L. Rev. 737 (2021); and forthcoming works such as "Extracting Clean Energy" in the UC Davis Law Review (2026) and "Clean Energy as Enclosure" in the University of Colorado Law Review (2026). Eisenberg has secured funding as principal investigator for an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant on just energy transitions (2023-2024) and co-principal investigator for another (2021-2023). She was selected to present a TEDx talk, “Reviving Rural America.”