People

Ashton Macfarlane is a JD/PhD student at Harvard Law School, where he is a Brooks Institute Emerging Scholars Fellow and a Notes Editor on the Harvard Law Review. His academic interests are at the intersection of animal and environmental law, and he has also written on administrative remedies and the history of global environmental monitoring. Past projects include the history of phenology—or the study of biological time—and its use as a climate change indicator in the twentieth century. Current projects include the history of the United States Clean Air Act, New Zealand-United States collaboration in carbon dioxide monitoring during the late-1960s and 1970s, and the management of solar development to protect threatened animal species in the American West.

Ashton has additionally worked on legal briefs in litigation surrounding the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and, more recently, California’s Proposition 12. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review as well as in journals in environmental history and the history of science. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in Biology and the History of Science, and spent a year before law school on a fellowship in New Zealand. Ashton also has served as a Clinic Research Assistant for the Animal Law & Policy Clinic.