Bob Adler was recently appointed by University President David Pershing as the 11th Dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law. Despite this more general role at the law school, he remains as devoted member of the Stegner faculty. This past year he published a book chapter (with Stegner Research Fellow John Ruple) on “Water and Climate Change” in Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, edited by Michael B. Gerrard and Jody Freeman. He also published an article in the University of Washington Law Review on “The Death and (Possible) Rebirth of Aspiration in the Clean Water Act,” and another in the Washington University Law Review on “The Ancient Mariner of Constitutional Law: The Declining Role of Navigability.” In his role as dean, he continues to oversee construction of the College of Law’s new LEED Platinum-designed building, scheduled to open in May of 2015.
Since January 2013, Robin Craig has published (with co-authors Dean Robert Adler and Noah Hall) a water law textbook, Modern Water Law, two book chapters on resilience, and eight articles in both science journals and law reviews, and she has several more in production. Her January 2014 Vanderbilt Law Review article with co-author J.B. Ruhl, “Designing Administrative Law for Adaptive Management,” became the subject of a federal agency summit hosted by the George Washington University Law School on September 19, 2014, while her May 2014 article with co-author Melinda Harm Benson, “The End of Sustainability,” became the focus of a July 2014 Environmental Law Institute webinar and an essay in Ensia. In September 2013 Professor Craig delivered the Jestraub Lecture in Water Law at the University of Montana School of Law (which became the subject of a local NPR broadcast), and in November 2013 she delivered the Clason Lecture at the Western New England University School of Law; since January 2013, she has also spoken at the AALS Annual Meeting, the University of Kansas School of Law (twice), the ABA SEER Annual Spring Conference, the University of Idaho College of Law, the University of Montana School of Law, Vermont Law School (twice), the Nevada Water Law Conference, the George Washington University School of Law (three times), the NYU School of Law, the ABA SEER Annual Water Law Conference, the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Annual Conference, a number of events at the University of Utah, and at the international Resilience 2014 Conference in Montpellier, France. Professor Craig serves or has served on the organizing committees for a number of conferences, including the ABA SEER Annual Spring Conference (March 2014), the ABA SEER 32nd Annual Water Law Conference (Vice Chair, June 2014), the Environmental Law Collaborative (July 2014), the Stegner Center’s conference on “The Wilderness Act at 50 and the Mountain West” (Sept. 2014), and the ABA SEER 33rd Annual Water Law Conference (Chair, June 2015). She is a member of the Adaptive Water Governance grant team funded by the National Socio-Ecological Synthesis Center in Annapolis, MD; a Technical Advisor to the River Network Mississippi River Nutrient Project, and a consultant to the Western Farm Growers Association on Clean Water Act issues. In January 2014, Professor Craig was appointed to the National Research Council’s Committee on the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, her fourth NRC committee appointment. In December 2014, Professor Craig will be using a University of Utah research grant to explore issues of national security and Maori participation in marine protected areas in New Zealand.
Lincoln Davies has begun serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Law. This past summer, he was named Presidential Scholar by the University, a recognition given to six “rising-star faculty members” campus-wide. His scholarship continues to focus on energy law and policy. He has co-authored a new casebook, Energy Law and Policy, which West Academic Press plans to release October 2014. His co-authors on the book are Alexandra Klass (Minnesota law), Hari Osofsky (Minnesota law), Joe Tomain (Dean Emeritus, University of Cincinnati law), and Elizabeth Wilson (Minnesota public policy). Earlier this year, he published a new article, “Feed-in Tariffs in Turmoil,” co-authored with Kirsten Allen, in the West Virginia Law Review. Using case studies of Germany, Spain, and South Korea, the article explains the difficulties that these laws, which are used to promote renewable energy, can face, and how they must adapt to remain effective. The leading blog on German energy law lauded the article as “a must read for anyone looking more closely into feed-in tariff systems, or trying to improve them.” He also submitted reports to the U.S. Department of Energy on carbon capture and sequestration (with Kirsten Uchitel) and to the Korea Legislation Research Institute on renewable energy law and green growth. Currently, Davies is at work on articles about how the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan exposes inherent tensions in energy policy, and how best to measure the performance of renewable portfolio standards. Over the last year, he presented his work in a number of forums, including at the annual conference of the Association for Law, Property, and Society at the University of British Columbia; at the Ohio Energy: Emerging Issues in Law, Finance and Regulation conference at Ohio State University; and at the Annual Meeting of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems.
Leslie Francis is currently serving the College of Law as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and as Director of the provisionally approved Center on Law and Biomedical Sciences. She also continues to teach disability law and health law at the College of Law. Last year and this upcoming year, she is also teaching environmental ethics for the Department of Philosophy as a service-learning course. She is currently the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to support a two-year post-doctoral fellow to study the legal needs of adults with diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder. This year, she was elected President-Elect of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, the highest academic honor in that organization. She also currently serves as co-chair of the Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Subcommittee of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics; as a member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Ethics; as an elected vice president of the International Society for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy; as chair of the board of And Justice for All; and as a member of the board of the Disability Law Center. Publication highlights for 2012-2013 include: Stein, M; Silvers, A; Areheart, B; Francis, L. 2014. “Accommodating Every Body.” University of Chicago Law Review 81(2): 689-757; Francis, Leslie P. & Francis, John G. 2013. “HIV Treatment as Prevention: Not an Argument for Continuing Criminalization of HIV Transmission,” International Journal of Law in Context 9(4): 520 – 534; and Silvers, Anita, and Francis, Leslie. 2013. Human Rights, Civil Rights: Prescribing Disability Discrimination Prevention in Packaging Essential Health Benefits. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 42: 781-791. Over the next year, she will be developing a course in public health law for the College of Law that she hopes will bridge her dual interests in health care and environmental policy.
Bob Keiter completed his year-long tenure as President of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation in July. He has given several talks on his recent book, To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea (Island Press, 2013), including appearances at the University of Wyoming, University of Colorado, Brigham Young University, Utah Humanities Council Book Festival, Tattered Cover Bookstore, and Teton County Bar Association. He also spoke at the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation’s Public Lands Special Institute, the Stegner Center’s Wilderness Act conference, and Southern Utah University’s debate over transfer of the public lands. He published a book review on Making Rocky Mountain National Park in the Western Historical Quarterly and provided video commentary to the National Park Service on the history of Yosemite National Park for the park’s 150th anniversary exhibit.
Nancy A. McLaughlin continues to work on updating the chapter on conservation easements in the often-cited Powell on Real Property treatise. She has two articles forthcoming: one on “Conservation Easement Law” co-authored with Federico Cheever, Professor of Law at University of Denver Sturm College of Law, in the Association for Law, Property and Society Journal, and a second on “Interpreting Conservation Easements in Favor of Conservation (Rather Than Free Use of Land),” in Probate & Property. Professor McLaughlin co-authored (with four other law professors) an amicus brief filed in Belk v. Commissioner, a tax court case involving “floating” conservation easements on appeal in the 4th Circuit. She published a number of op-eds in Vermont co-authored with two other law professors that were instrumental in the eventual withdrawal of legislation intended to grant a state administrative board the power to substantially modify or terminate perpetual conservation easements in the state. She produced a report for a Vermont-based charitable foundation on state laws governing charities and charitable gifts. She also worked with a group of law professors, funders, land conservation professionals, and students at the Harvard Law School Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic on a report examining the safeguards and gaps in conservation easement purchase and tax-incentive programs.
In May of 2014, Professor McLaughlin helped organize and presented at a conference at Columbia Law School on the role of the state attorney general in protecting conservation easements on behalf of the public. The conference was co-sponsored by Columbia Law School’s National Association of Attorneys General Program, the National Association of State Charity Officials, and the Conservation Law Center, which is affiliated with Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She also has presented on various charitable and conservation easement-related topics at a variety of other academic and nonacademic venues, including the California Council of Land Trusts Annual Conference; the University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute; the Maryland Land Conservation Conference; the American Bar Association Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section’s Annual Symposium; the Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; the Forest Legacy Program National Meeting; and the Land Trust Alliance National Conference.
Professor McLaughlin was appointed as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations project. She was appointed Co-Chair of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel’s Legal Education Committee and Chair of ACTEC’s the Academic Fellows Committee. She also was appointed as Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section’s Legislative and Regulatory Issues Committee, and she helps to organize the section’s popular monthly Professors Corner Series and serves on the section’s Conservation Easement Guidance Committee.
Professor McLaughlin blogs on conservation easement current developments on the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2014/09/irs-on-conservation-easement-appraisals.html.
Jamie Pleune serves as the director of the Environmental Law Clinic and she teaches Environmental Practice, in addition to engaging in private practice at Richards Brandt Miller Nelson. Over the past year, she forged a partnership with the Salt Lake District Attorney’s Office and the Salt Lake County Department of Health that will allow the College of Law to offer one of the first hybrid prosecution environmental law clinics in the country. Students will work side-by-side with Salt Lake County District Attorneys on behalf of the Department of Health, which has regulatory and enforcement authority for environmental and health related issues at the county level. Through this partnership, students will have an opportunity to work on at least one rulemaking project and one enforcement action over the course of the year. These two avenues of practice provide an invaluable opportunity for College of Law students to grapple with the practicalities of client representation, professional responsibility, regulatory drafting, and litigation. This partnership also allows the clinic to provide a valuable community service by augmenting Salt Lake County’s resources for prosecuting environmental violations. Law students can help work up cases that are otherwise too small to justify the resources associated with enforcement. A two-fold benefit to the environment results: (1) by increasing its enforcement capacity, the Salt Lake County Health Department can use consistent enforcement on small-scale violations as an educational tool for the regulated community, which will hopefully avoid larger violations with more serious environmental consequences; (2) fewer environmental law violations is consistent with the clinic’s mission to participate in the shared social goal of preserving and protecting the integrity of the environment for the present and the future.
Arnold W. Reitze, Jr. authored three articles in 2014. They are: “Utah’s Fine Particulate Air Pollution Problem” in the Utah Law Review Online (2014) (pending); “The International Law of Air Pollution and Climate Change,” in International Law: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Laws of the Planet (ABA 2014); and “Federal Control of Air Emissions from New Heavy-Duty Road Vehicles,” in 44 Environmental Law (ELI) 10216 (Mar. 2014). He lectured on Air Quality Regulation at Global Changes and Society, U of U, Department of Geology, January 29, 2014; Air Quality Regulation, at Global Changes and Society, U of U, Department of Geology; Inversion Conversion: Legal and Policy Issues Related to Utah Air Quality, U of U Law School CLE Program, March 6, 2014; Environmental Regulatory Law Review, Air & Waste Management Association, April 17, 2014; Clean Air Act, CLE International, May 9, 2014. On June 12, 2014, Professor Reitze discussed EPA’s Clean Power Plan, on KCPW Radio, “The Rundown” with Roger McDonough.
John Ruple coauthored “Managing Water Supplies,” in Adaptation to Climate Change and the Law: U.S. and International Aspects (ABA) with Dean Bob Adler. He also published a Stegner Center White Paper “The Future of Federal-State Land Exchanges” with Stegner Center Director Bob Keiter. He is currently working on a series of white papers and law review article addressing Utah’s Transfer of Public Lands Act and burgeoning efforts to assert state control over federal public lands. He is leading a first-of-kind effort to empirically assess how projects evolve through the NEPA process and whether project evolutions result in reduced environmental impacts. He is also involved in efforts to update the state water plan. He is collaborating with university faculty throughout the Intermountain West as well as regional and national NGOs on proposals to advance public land and natural resource stewardship. He is also the principal investigator on a pending EPA proposal for an experiential environmental law course developing collaborative programs to address pressing environmental issues in southeastern Utah.
Michele Straube, Director of the Stegner Center’s Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program, speaks and writes regularly about collaborative problem-solving and consensus-building to raise awareness within the region about these processes. She wrote several entries for the newly launched EDR Blog (www.edrblog.org), including “Can Litigation Provide an Opportunity for Collaboration in Capitol Reef NP?” and “Taking a Risk in the Public Lands Debate: Dialogue about What Really Matters.” The latter piece was also published as an OpEd in the Salt Lake Tribune. Another blog entry, “Are We Wired to Cooperate?” was based on a presentation at the Utah Symposium on Science and Literature. Director Straube worked with students to research and write a Situation Assessment of Homeless Issues in Downtown Salt Lake City. She also facilitated the University of Utah’s Air Quality Task Force, a group representing all organizational units on campus charged with developing consensus recommendations on actions to reduce the university’s air quality footprint.