Professor Bob Adler has been dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law for the past three years but has still been able to keep a few toes in his substantive fields of environmental and water law. At the one-year anniversary of the new College of Law building, he was delighted to receive from a representative of the U.S. Green Building Council the formal LEED Platinum certification for the new facility, which has also received several other awards for sustainable design and construction. The law school also funded the first solar parking canopy on the University of Utah campus, which began to generate power in September 2016. In 2015, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Freshwater Science published his article, “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s New Waters of the United States Rule: Connecting Law and Science,” based on a talk he gave at Utah State University’s Spring Runoff Conference. He is also contributing a chapter on “Climate Change and Water Law in Agriculture” to a forthcoming Research Handbook on Climate and Agricultural Law co-edited by Mary Jane Angelo and Anel du Plessis. With Professor Robin Craig and their co-author Noah Hall, he is completing a new Water Law volume for the “Concepts and Insights” series by Foundation Press. He was also able to fit in teaching Water Law during Spring 2016 and will do so again this year (spring 2017).
Professor and Acting Stegner Center Director (2016-2017) Robin Kundis Craig spent January, February, and the first week of March 2016 as a Visiting Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania Faculty of Law in Australia, where she taught “Comparative Water Law” in their summer session, researched resilience theory under Australian environmental law, and gave lectures both at the University of Tasmania and the University of Melbourne. Once back in the United States, she gave a series of lectures at the Northwestern University (ocean acidification), University of Florida (resilience theory and marine fisheries law), University of Denver (The End of Sustainability), University of Akron (The End of Sustainability and marine fisheries), American Water Resources Association’s spring conference in Anchorage (adaptive water governance and the water-energy nexus), and Arizona State University (stability and flexibility in adaptive water governance) before serving as a senior scholar commentator at the Sabin Colloquium on Innovative Environmental Law Scholarship, Sabin Center on Climate Change Law, Columbia University School of Law. She and Stephen Miller co-edited and each contributed to Contemporary Issues in Climate Change Law & Policy: Essays Inspired by the IPCC (ELI April 2016), and she published the Fourth Edition of Environmental Law in Context in July 2016 and edited the 2016-2017 edition of West’s Selected Environmental Statutes (June 2017). She is currently completing The End of Sustainability with Melinda Harm Benson of the University of New Mexico (University of Kansas Press) and Water Law: Concepts & Insights (West) with Dean Bob Adler and Noah Hall. Since January 2016, Craig has published six articles in both law and science journals and two book chapters and has several more of each in press. She just completed her duties as Co-Chair of the Water Section for the July 2016 Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Association Annual Institution and on the Planning Committees for the ABA SEER Water Law Conference and Annual Stegner Symposium, both held in March 2016. Appointed Acting Director of the Stegner Center in July 2016 while Professor Bob Keiter is on sabbatical, she is also currently working with the Utah court educational office to educate Utah judges on the intricacies of water law; is Co-Chair of the ABA SEER Committee for Law Professors; and will be taking over as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Environmental Law Section in January 2017.
Professor Lincoln Davies published a new book that overviews U.S. energy law, Energy Law in the United States (Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2015) (with Joseph Tomain). He also published several articles over the last year. These include: Fukushima’s Shadow, 48 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 1083 (2015) (with Alexis Jones); U.S. Renewable Energy Policy in Context, 15 Environmental Law and Policy 33 (2015); and Incomplete Integration: Water, Drought, and Electricity Planning in the West, 31 Journal of Environmental Law & Litigation 167 (2016) (with Victoria Luman). He currently is at work on a series of articles related to renewable portfolio standards (RPSs), an article on the changing nature of legal support mechanisms for solar energy, and an article on how agencies use rulemaking authority to influence public behavior (with Amy Wildermuth). During summer 2016, Davies also served as a visiting professor at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, where he taught a course on energy policy, and at the University of Sydney law school in Australia, where he delivered a series of lectures on a variety of topics, including the Clean Power Plan.
Professor Leslie Frances served as President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. The APA has three divisions, and being a divisional president is generally recognized as the highest academic honor for a philosopher. She delivered her presidential address in San Francisco, on April 1, 2016, on “Applied Ethics: A Misnomer for a Field?” She coauthored, with Professors Robin Craig and Erika George, “The FDA’s Troubling Failures to Use its Authority to Regulate Genetically Modified Foods,” 71 Food & Drug Law Journal 105 (2016). She completed editing The Oxford Handbook on Reproductive Ethics (currently available online, with the print version available in January 2017). She authored the introduction and the chapter on surrogate motherhood. She continues to serve as a member of the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Professor and Stegner Center Director Bob Keiter has completed the manuscript for the second edition of The Wyoming State Constitution, which will be published by Oxford University Press as part of its Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States. He has also published, with John Ruple, two white papers through the Wallace Stegner Center on When Winning Means Losing: Why a State Takeover of Public Lands May Leave States Without the Minerals They Covet and Alternatives to the Public Lands Act, with a third white paper pending on National Monuments and National Conservation Areas: A Comparison in Light of the Bears Ears Proposal. His other publications include Foreword: National Parks at the Centennial, 56 Nat. Res. J. ii (2016), and National Park System Expansion: Confronting a Second Century Challenge (National Parks Traveler Centennial Project) at http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2016/05/centennial-series-national-park-system-expansion-confronting-second-century-challenge.
Professor Keiter’s speaking engagements include Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Special Institute, “Evolution of Federal Public Land and Resource Law in the 21st Century,” Santa Fe, NM, Jan. 2017 (forthcoming); New Mexico State University National Parks Symposium, “National Parks at the Centennial,” Las Cruces, NM, Nov. 2016 (forthcoming); Utah Division of State History, “Researching Western Public Land Issues: A Lawyer’s Perspective,” Salt Lake City, UT, Sept. 2016; American Association of Law Librarians, Western Pacific Chapter , “The Evolution of the National Park Idea,” Jackson, WY, Sept. 2016; Wyoming State Bar Convention, “New Developments in Wyoming Constitutional Law,” Laramie, WY, Sept. 2016; Denver University Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute Annual Conf., “Sagebrush Rebellion III?: The Transfer of Public Lands Movement,” and “Federal Public Lands: The Heart of the Rocky Mountain West,” Denver, CO, March 2016; University of Colorado Getches-Wilkinson Center Winter Conference, “Charles Wilkinson and the American West: A Man for His Times,” Boulder, CO, March 2016.
Professor Nancy McLaughlin was appointed as an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations project and as a member of the American Bar Association Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law (RPTE) section’s Conservation Easements Task Force. She serves as co-chair of the American College of Trust and Estates Counsel’s Legal Education Committee, on the board of directors of Utah Open Lands (a state-wide land trust), on the advisory board of Vital Ground (which works to protect grizzly bear habitat), and on the advisory board of the Humane Society’s Wildlife Land Trust (a national land trust). She is comprehensively updating the chapter on conservation easements in the often-cited Powell on Real Property treatise as well as the volume on charitable trusts in the often-cited Bogert, The Law of Trusts and Trustees treatise. She published “Conservation Easements and the Valuation Conundrum” in the Florida Tax Review, which was featured in Peter J. Reilly, Conservation Easement Tax Deductions and Valuation Abuse, Forbes.com (Taxes) (Jan. 15, 2016), and she was quoted in the front page Richard Rubin, “IRS Tees Off on Golf Courses’ Green Tax Claims,” Wall Street Journal (Jan. 4, 2016) article. She provided extensive comments on request to the U.S. Forest Service on its Forest Legacy Program guidelines; served as an expert witness for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in a case involving the Department’s enforcement of a conservation easement; and provided assistance to landowners in Wyoming seeking to prevent development in violation of a perpetual conservation easement. She has presented on a variety of topics in a variety of venues in 2016, including at the sustainability conference at Arizona State University; at the annual conference of the National College of Probate Judges; at the annual meeting of the U.S. Forest Service Forest Legacy Program; at various meetings of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the American Bar Association; at the annual Maryland Land Conservation Conference; at Sweet Briar College (on the fight to save the college); and via teleconference for USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service agency attorneys and the Kentucky Land Trust Coalition. She blogs on conservation easement current developments on the Nonprofit Law Professors Blog, she helps organize the ABA RPTE section’s popular monthly Professors Corner Series, and she serves as professional editor for the ABA RPTE’s academic law journal.
Professor Arnold Reitze continues to serve on the Utah Air Quality Board. He will be teaching a new course in alternative energy in Fall 2016. He published the following articles: “Biofuel,” Encyclopedia of Environmental Law (Daniel Farber & Marjan Peeters, eds., 2016); “The Volkswagen Air Pollution Emissions Litigation,” 46 Envtl. L. Rep. (ELI) 10,565 (July 2016); “The Volkswagen Air Pollution Emissions Scam,” Trends (ABA Section of Env’t, Energy, & Resources) 1 (Mar./Apr. 2016); “Air Pollution Emissions During Startups, Shutdowns, and Malfunctions,” 2015 Utah L. Rev. Online (2015); “Biofuel and Advanced Biofuel,” 33 UCLA J of Envtl. L. 310 (2015); “The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone,” 6 Arizona J. Envtl. L. & Policy (Nov. 5, 2015); and “Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards: Should Cost Be a Consideration?,” 30 Nat. Res. & Env’t 2:3 (Fall 2015).
Professor Danya Rumore joined the Stegner Center as the Associate Director of the Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program in July 2015. She is also a Research Assistant Professor in both the S.J. Quinney College of Law and the University of Utah Department of City and Metropolitan Planning. Dr. Rumore holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research and work focus on supporting more collaborative decision-making and planning around environmental and natural resource issues throughout the mountain west. Since joining the Stegner Center, Dr. Rumore published the co-authored book Managing Climate Risks in Coastal Communities: Strategies for Engagement, Readiness, and Adaptation and a number of articles, including “Role-Play Simulations for Climate Change Adaptation Education and Engagement” in the leading environmental journal Nature Climate Change and “Using Devising Seminars to Advance Collaborative Problem Solving in Complicated Public Policy Disputes” in Negotiation Journal. She recently received a grant from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities to support the Environmental Dispute Resolution Program’s collaborative regional planning work around Zion National Park. With Michele Straube, she is developing and teaching the Short Course on Effective Natural Resources Collaboration professional training. She also taught Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the College of Architecture and Planning in Spring 2016 and she will teach the course again in Spring 2017.
Together with College of Law alumni Mark Capone, Professor John Ruple published “NEPA — Substantive Effectiveness Under a Procedural Mandate: An Assessment of Oil and Gas EISs in the Mountain West,” 7-1 Geo. Wash. J. Energy & Envtl. L. 39 (2016), and “NEPA, FLPMA, and Impact Reduction: An Empirical Assessment of BLM Resource Management Planning and NEPA in the Mountain West,” 46 Envtl. L. (2016). Their article “NEPA and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 Statutory Categorical Exclusions: What are the Environmental Costs of Expedited Oil and Gas Development?” has also been accepted for publication and is forthcoming. Additionally, John authored chapters on both land use and water use in Utah Oil Shale: Science, Technology, and Policy Perspectives (CRC Press 2016). Together with University of Utah Professor Kerry Kelley and Graduate Research Assistant Jon Wilkey, he also co-authored the chapter on air quality and carbon emission management in the same book. Professor Ruple, together with Mark Capone, Allison Jones, and Emanuel Vasquez, also authored “Shooting the Albatross: Why a State Takeover of Federal Public Lands Would Make Endangered Species Act Compliance More Expensive and Difficult,” 39 Environs Envtl. L. & Policy J. 115 (2016). On a related noted, Professor Ruple and Stegner Center Director Bob Keiter co-authored Alternatives to Transfer of Public Lands Act Litigation, Stegner Center White Paper No. 2016-01 (2016), and When Winning is Losing: Why a State Takeover of Public Lands May Leave States Without the Minerals They Covet, Stegner Center White Paper No. 2015-02 (2015). Forthcoming efforts include a comprehensive law review article critiquing the transfer of public lands movement, and a white paper comparing National Monuments to National Conservation Areas and competing proposals to protect public lands in Southeastern Utah.
Professor Michele Straube, Director of the Stegner Center’s Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program, works to build collaborative problem-solving capacity among law students and within the larger community. Students in her Environmental Conflict Resolution (Spring 2016) course write a paper analyzing a past, or designing a future, collaborative process for a real-life environmental or natural resource issue; many of these case studies are published to the EDR Program website. She is teaching Conflict Management in Fall 2016. Ms. Straube is one of two primary faculty presenting the inaugural Short Course on Effective Natural Resources Collaboration to a cohort of 24 practitioners representing a diverse cross-section of environmental/natural resource stakeholder groups, and she is serving as mentor/coach for 12 of the capstone projects. She continues to work with students designing and facilitating collaborative processes, currently focusing on sustainable grazing on public lands and watershed partnerships. Ms. Straube has been appointed as co-chair of the ABA-SEER ADR Committee for the 2016-2017 year; she served as newsletter co-chair of this committee for the past two years.