Sydney Schoonover is a sixth-year student in the Program of Law and Economics at Vanderbilt Law School. Her research focuses on the enforcement of environmental regulations, particularly under the Clean Air Act; monetization of emissions reduction in environmental regulatory impact analysis; and federal administrative and appellate law.

Sydney formerly served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (2024–2025) and an Articles Editor on the Vanderbilt Law Review (2024–2025). In addition to working as a research assistant to Professor W. Kip Viscusi, Sydney has previously interned and worked at Donahue, Goldberg & Herzog (Summer 2025 & 2026), the Southern Environmental Law Center (Spring 2025 Extern); the Environmental Defense Fund (Summer 2024 Clean Air Act Intern), the Environmental Law Institute (2020), the Department of Energy at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (2020–2021 and Summer 2022), and the U.S. House of Representatives in the Office of Congressman Ben Ray Luján (2018). Upon graduating in 2027, Sydney will clerk for the Honorable Judge Harris L. Hartz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2028.

Sydney is originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico and is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley with majors in Environmental Economics & Policy (B.S.) and Environmental Sociology (B.S.) as well as a minor in Public Policy & Practice.

Education:
B.S., Environmental Economics/Policy and Environmental Sociology, University of California at Berkeley, 2020

Publications:

• Smarter Deregulation, 2027 U. Ill. L. Rev. (2027) (forthcoming). (Link)
  • Presented at the April 2026 Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Workshop (invited).
• Note, Energizing Federal Action Towards a More Coherent National Nuclear Waste Policy, 78 Vand. L. Rev. 1037 (2025).
• Reconciling Regulatory Impact Analysis and Agencies’ Statutory Mandates for Environmental Regulations under Loper Bright v. Raimondo, 55 Env’t L. (forthcoming) (with W. Kip Viscusi).
• Analysis of Environmental Law Scholarship 2023–2024, 55 Env’t L. Rep. (2025) (invited contribution) (with Chloe C. Allen, Linda K. Breggin, and Michael P. Vandenbergh).
• Equitable Assignment of Standing for Intergenerational and International Environmental Policies, 66 Ariz L. Rev. 643 (2024) (with W. Kip Viscusi).
  • • Recognized as one of the top 10 environmental law articles of 2024–2025 by the Environmental Law Institute and Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review.