The S.J. Quinney College of Law is pleased to announce that professors of law Brigham Daniels and Lincoln Davies have been named co-directors of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment. Daniels and Davies began jointly leading the Stegner Center on July 1. Together, they will guide the scholarly and educational activities of one of the nation’s top centers for environmental law.
Daniels joined the College of Law in 2022, after serving as the Marion B. and Rulon A. Earl Professor at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. He is an expert in environmental and property law, with a current focus on climate change, the Great Salt Lake, and the creation and administration of environmental law. In 2023 he founded the Stegner Center’s Great Salt Lake Project, which analyses legal pathways to restoring the Great Salt Lake.
Davies returns to the college this year, having most recently served as dean and Frank R. Strong Chair at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Prior to that, Davies was professor and Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at Utah Law. He is an expert in energy law and policy with a particular emphasis on renewable energy policy, and he has written extensively on utility regulation, carbon capture and sequestration, and regulatory and technology innovation, among other topics.
“For decades, the Stegner Center has worked to find and highlight solutions to the West’s most pressing environmental problems,” Daniels said. “I am thrilled to contribute to the center’s future. From the drying Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Front’s air quality problems to the impact of tourism and energy development on our public lands, never has the center’s work been more important than it is now.”
Davies is also excited for the new leadership opportunity.
“It is a tremendous honor and privilege to help lead the Stegner Center—on the incredible foundation that Bob Keiter built, with the visionary leadership and undaunted advocacy Brig Daniels brings, and with the incredible faculty and staff who make the Center so great,” Davies said. “Together, we will continue to work toward even greater impact for good in Utah, in the West, and in environmental law and policy more broadly.”
Daniels and Davies assume leadership of the Stegner Center from outgoing director Robert Keiter, Wallace Stegner Professor of Law at the college, who has led the center since its founding in 1994 and who will remain on the college’s faculty.
“I am tremendously grateful for Bob Keiter’s work as director of the Stegner Center over the past 30 years,” said Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner. “Bob’s dedication to the center’s scholarship and teaching has been pivotal to its national prominence and far-reaching influence. I am also truly excited to welcome Brig and Lincoln as co-directors—I look forward to their leadership in expanding the impact of the Stegner Center, whose work is vitally important to the future of our environment and our communities.”
Named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and conservationist, the Wallace Stegner Center is home to a renowned cohort of scholars in a wide range of areas in environmental law. Their work informs law and policy nationwide, and through their scholarship and teaching they are involved in addressing our most complex environmental challenges. Additionally, the center houses the S.J. Quinney College of Law’s environmental law program, which is ranked #7 nationally in 2024.