Dean and Professor Bob Adler was able to take a break from being dean spring semester 2018. He and his wife spent part of the time traveling in New Zealand with their daughter (who is in graduate school there), and he was able to get back to some long deferred academic projects during the rest of the time. He will have one article entitled Natural Resources and Natural Law Part I: Prior Appropriation published next year in the William and Mary Law Review. (Yes, stay tuned for a Part II!). Another article, inspired by a presentation at the Society for Freshwater Science, will be published next year in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, and is called Coevolution of Law and Science: A Clean Water Act Case Study. He also wrote a chapter for inclusion in a book honoring the sesquicentennial of John Wesley Powell’s pioneering journeys down the Green and Colorado Rivers (Robison, McCool and Minckley, eds.), and gave academic presentations at the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado. Bob has now returned to his final year of a 6-year term as Dean of the College of Law, and looks forward to another semester of sabbatical next fall and then his promotion back to the regular faculty!
In 2017, Professor Jorge Contreras collaborated with Prof. Joshua Sarnoff (DePaul) and Dr. Jesse Reynolds (Utrecht) to propose the policy contours of a “research commons” for solar geoengineering technologies. See Jesse L. Reynolds, Jorge L. Contreras and Joshua D. Sarnoff, Solar Climate Engineering and Intellectual Property: Toward a Research Commons, 18 Minn. J. L. Sci. & Tech. 1-110 (2017) (lead article) and Jesse L. Reynolds, Jorge L. Contreras and Joshua D. Sarnoff, Intellectual Property Policies for Solar Geoengineering. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1-7 (2018). Professor Contreras also collaborated with Professor Bronwyn Hall (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Christian Helmers (Santa Clara Univ.) on a study of the Eco-Patent Commons, an innovative strategy for contributing “green” tech patents to the public domain, which ran from 2008-16. They assessed how successful the EPC was and what eventually led to its demise. See Jorge L. Contreras, Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers, Assessing the Effectiveness of the Eco-Patent Commons: A post-mortem analysis, CIGI Papers No. 161, Feb. 2018 (with Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers). In addition, in April 2018, Professor Contreras hosted the Utah premier of the documentary film Little Pink House at the College of Law. The event included a panel discussion with Jeff Benedict, the director and author of the award-winning book on which the film was based. The book and film trace the story of Suzette Kelo, whose battle to save her home from eminent domain condemnation by the City of New London, Connecticut reached the Supreme Court and resulted in the landmark decision Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).
In August 2018, James I. Farr Presidential Endowed Professor of Law Robin K. Craig was recognized as one of the Top 25 Most-Cited Faculty in Public Law for 2013-2017. She is spending Fall 2018 on sabbatical, pursuing a variety of her responsibilities and interests. During the summer of 2018, she became a new Trustee-at-Large for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, where she also serves as Co-Chair of the Natural Resources Law Teachers Committee and helped to organize the lunch session speaker and planning sessions at the Foundation’s Annual Institute in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. With her Co-Chair, she is now heading up the Planning Committee for the 2019 RMMLF Natural Resources Law Teachers Institute, to be held in Missoula, Montana. Professor Craig also participated in the fourth installment of the biennial Environmental Law Collaborative and an international workshop on citizen participation in climate change at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and as Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources’ Law Professors Committee, she helped to organize the first-ever Law Professors Workshop, which will be held at SEER’s Annual Fall Conference in San Diego in October. In September and October 2018, Professor Craig will be in New Zealand, giving a Keynote Address at the Resource Managers Law Association annual conference in Wellington before heading to the University of Otago in Dunedin, where she has been awarded the William Evans Visiting Research Fellowship. While at the University of Otago, she will give a series of departmental talks, guest classroom lectures, and public lectures in a variety of departments–from law to marine science–while researching the role of Maori management in coastal protection in New Zealand. In November, she will spend a week at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, School of Natural Resources, in conjunction with her appointment to the External Advisory Board for the University’s fiver-year Natural Resources Traineeship (NRT) Program. In December, Professor Craig will speak at the RMMLF conference on Today’s Environmental Agencies: Regulatory Enforcement, Citizen Suits, and the Natural Resources Industries before heading to Hawaii with her husband to celebrate their 30th anniversary. In Spring 2019, Professor Craig returns to the College of Law to teach an Ocean & Coastal Law Seminar and Property. She and Environmental Humanities colleague Jeff McCarthy received a Global Change & Sustainability Center seed grant for a conference and book on Re-Valuing the Ocean; the conference will occur February 14-15, 2019, and features Keynote Speaker Dr. Jeremy B.C. Jackson, while the book should appear in print in 2020. Over the course of Spring 2019, Professor Craig will speak at the University of Arizona School of Law, the U.C. Berkeley Law School, Vanderbilt University School of Law, and Lewis & Clark School of Law, and she is helping to plan a training session on water law at Stanford University for judges and ALJs with the National Judicial College. Professor Craig, Bob Adler, and Noah Hall just published the Second Edition of Modern Water Law and have a revised Teachers Manual in the works, and she edited the 2018-2019 edition of Selected Environmental Law Statutes. She also has forthcoming or recently published book chapters in Zero-Sum Games in Environmental Law (ELI 2019), Governing Across the Waves (University of Chicago Press 2019), Climate Change, Public Health, and the Law (Cambridge University Press 2018), Water Rights and Environmental Regulation: A Lawyer’s Guide (ABA 2018), and Research Handbook on Climate Disaster Law: Barriers and Opportunities (Edward Elgar 2018). Finally, Professor Craig has forthcoming or has published articles in Pace Environmental Law Review (2019), Marine Policy (2019), Jurimetrics (2018), Texas A&M Law Review (Symposium 2018), University of Arkansas Little Rock Law Review (Symposium 2018), Houston Health Law Journal (2018), Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law & Policy (2018), Public Land & Resources Law Review (2018), and Climatic Change (2018).
Lincoln Davies continues to serve as the law school’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. His research remains focused on energy law and policy. His three most recent articles are: Empirical Evaluation of the Stringency and Design of Renewable Portfolio Standards, 3 Nature Energy 754 (2018) (with Carley, Spence, and Zirogiannis); Eulogizing Renewable Energy Policy, 33 Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law (2018); and Trump, Energy Policy, and Hard Look Review, forthcoming in the Annual Proceedings of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation (2018) (with Hubbard and Sanders). In addition, earlier this year, West Academic Press issued the second edition of Professor Davies’ textbook, Energy Law and Policy (2018) (with Klass, Osofsky, Tomain, and Wilson). Currently, Professor Davies is at work on several articles related to renewable energy law and policy. He also is working on a new Administrative Law textbook with Professors Jim Moliterno and Keith Rizzardi. On November 9, the Stegner Center and the University of Utah law school will host the PURPA @ 40 conference on the past, present, and future of renewable energy law and policy in the United States,, organized by Professor Davies.
Professor Bob Keiter spent spring semester 2018 serving as Acting Dean at the S.J. Quinney College of Law. He has recently published “Toward a National Conservation Network Act: Transforming Landscape Conservation on the Public Lands into Law,” 42 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 61 (2018), and “Conserving Wild Bison in the 21st Century” in Reimagining a Place for the Wild (L. Miller et al., eds., Univ. of Utah Press, 2018). In August, at the Chinese government’s invitation, Bob spoke on the national park idea at the International Symposium on National Parks in Kunming, China. Following publication of his book, The Wyoming State Constitution (2d ed., Oxford Univ. Press, 2017), he has delivered several talks about the Wyoming Constitution, and also spoken on “Wildfire Law and Policy on Federal Public Lands” at the University of Oregon and University of Utah law schools, and on “Federal Public Lands: An Evolving Legal and Policy Framework” at the Wallace Stegner Center’s 23rd annual symposium on “Public Lands in a Changing West.”
Professor Nancy McLaughlin was appointed in 2017 as Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s first edition of a new Restatement of the Law of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations. This will be the first Restatement of the Law addressing the U.S. charitable sector. Professor McLaughlin is responsible for (among other things) drafting the new Restatement’s sections addressing charitable gifts, donor-imposed restrictions, and the enforcement of charitable pledges. Professor McLaughlin was also appointed in 2017 as Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s Study Committee on the Uniform Conservation Easement Act (UCEA). In that role she closely reviewed the conservation easement enabling statutes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and relevant case law and produced a comprehensive report for the Study Committee that discusses the history of the UCEA and the use of conservation easements in the U.S., as well as state-of-the art conservation easement enabling statute provisions. Professor McLaughlin published the lead article in Volume 37 of the Virginia Tax Review, Tax-Deductible Conservation Easements and the Essential Perpetuity Requirements. She has a book chapter, Tax Incentives for Conservation Easement Donations: Learning from the U.S. Experience, forthcoming in Tax and the Environment (Lexington Books 2018). She was invited to contribute this chapter because other countries are increasingly using conservation easements in lieu of other land protection tools with little understanding of the challenges and risks associated with the use of easements. Professor McLaughlin is also serving as a member of the American Bar Association Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law (RPTE) section’s Conservation Easements Task Force, and the Task Force’s Report, Recommended Reforms to Federal Tax Law of Conservation Easements, is forthcoming in the ABA’s Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Journal in the fall of 2018. Professor McLaughlin serves on the board of regents of the American College of Trust and Estates Counsel, the board of directors of Utah Open Lands (a state-wide land trust), the advisory board of Vital Ground (which works to protect grizzly bear habitat), and the advisory board of the Humane Society’s Wildlife Land Trust (a national land trust). She has presented on a variety of conservation easement-related topics in a variety of venues, including at the University of Virginia School of Law, the Maryland Land Conservation Conference, the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program’s national meeting, and the Georgia Federal Tax Conference. She also was quoted regarding conservation easement and charitable issues in the Wall Street Journal, the Palm Beach Post, and Vermont’s Valley News.
Arnold Reitze continued to participate as a member of Utah’s Air Quality Board. His scholarly writing this year includes: Dealing with Climate Change Under the National Environmental Policy Act, 43 William & Mary Envtl. L. and Pol’y Rev. (FALL 2018); Visibility Protection Under the Clean Air Act, Geo. Washington J. of Energy & Envtl. L. (fall 2018): Evaluation of Circuit Judge Kavanaugh’s Opinions Concerning the CAA, Envtl. L. Network, The Control of Methane and VOC Emissions from Oil and Gas Operations in the Western United States, 54 Idaho Law Review 213 (2018); and The Motor Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Program: Is It Cost Effective?, 47 Envtl. L. Rep. (ELI) 10,877 (Oct. 2017).
Professor Danya Rumore, Director of the Wallace Stegner Center’s Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program, was promoted in 2018 to a Research Associate Professor in the S.J. Quinney College of Law. She is also a faculty member in and the University of Utah Department of City and Metropolitan Planning. Dr. Rumore received the 2018 Rob Williams Award for Emerging Environment and Public Policy Leaders from the national Association for Conflict Resolution Environment and Public Policy Section (ACR EPP); the award is presented annually to an individual showing promise to exercise outstanding leadership in the field of environmental conflict resolution. In addition to serving as a member of the Leadership Council for ACR EPP, she is the co-Chair of the national University Network for Collaborative Governance (UNCG) and a member of the Executive Committee for the University of Utah Global Change and Sustainability Center. Dr. Rumore is overseeing the EDR Program’s Utah Program on Collaboration and many other efforts, and also facilitates regional collaborative planning efforts around Zion National Park, Utah, and in Bonner County, Idaho. She is currently in the process of developing and launching the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative at the University of Utah, which will support research, education, and capacity aimed at addressing the unique planning-related challenges facing gateway and amenity communities throughout Utah and the mountain west. Dr. Rumore teaches a graduate-level class on Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the Public Sector for the College of Architecture and Planning. She also teaches a graduate-level workshop course on Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Planning, and co-developed and co-instructs the EDR Program’s annual Short Course on Effective Natural Resources Collaboration professional training. During the last year, she gave numerous keynotes, invited talks, and conference presentations, including for the Utah American Planning Association Chapter, the Utah Outdoor Recreation Summit, the Utah Climate Action Network, and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities.
During the last year, Professor John Ruple coauthored Bears Ears National Monument—An Ongoing Effort to Protect Heritage on a Landscape Scale in the forthcoming book Pushing Boundaries (Univ. Press of Colo. 2019). He also authored chapters on public land management, as well as wilderness and national monuments in the forthcoming book The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands (Ore. State Univ. Press 2019). His forthcoming article The Trump Administration and Lessons Not Learned from Prior National Monument Modifications, Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. (2019) reviews all prior national monument reductions by US Presidents and concludes that there is no legal or factual precedent for President Trump’s recent reductions to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. In Up for Grabs—The State of Fossil Protection in (Recently) Unprotected National Monuments, Geo. Envtl. L. Rev. Online (2018), John and 3Ls Caitlin Ceci and Michael Henderson refute assertions that paleontological resources within lands removed from national monuments are adequately protected by other laws. John also authored Protected Area Conservation in the American Bar Association’s The Year in Review 2017. Collaborating with Professor Lincoln Davies, he completed a Department of Energy funded study on retrofitting coal-fired power plants to permanently sequester CO2. Their findings appear in Legal, Regulatory and Liability Assessment: CarbonSAFE Rocky Mountain Phase I (2018). Professor Ruple is currently working with Professor Robin Craig and 2L Connor Arrington on legal and institutional barriers to water resource allocation and management in Pakistan. John will travel to Islamabad in October to discuss water resource allocation with the Law & Justice Commission of Pakistan and members of the Pakistani Supreme Court. With 3L Max Williams and 2Ls Kayla Race and Nate Broadhurst, John is conducting empirical assessments of National Environmental Policy Act litigation, and of environmental impact reduction attributable to the NEPA review process. In collaboration with Geography Professor Phoebe McNeally and 3L Michael Henderson, John in working on a US Forest Service funded study of legal challenges to national forest system planning efforts. In his free time, John volunteers on the Board of Directors for Friends of Cedar Mesa, which recently opened a privately funded visitor education center at the gateway to the Bears Ears National Monument.