Shelley Welton is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where she holds an affiliation with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy in the Weitzman School as part of President Amy Gutmann’s 2019 commitment to build a multidisciplinary energy policy faculty affiliated with the Kleinman Center.

At the Law School, Welton teaches environmental law and a climate change law seminar. She also teaches “Introduction to Energy Policy,” a university-wide graduate course, for the Kleinman Center on Energy Policy.

Welton comes to Penn from the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she taught administrative law, energy law, environmental law and policy, environmental justice, and climate change law. Her scholarship has appeared in publications including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review.

Prior to academia, Welton worked as the deputy director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. She also clerked for the Honorable David Trager of the Eastern District of New York and the Honorable Allyson Duncan of the Fourth Circuit. She received her Ph.D. in law from Yale Law, her J.D. from NYU School of Law, a Master of Public Administration in environmental science and policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.