Faculty Accomplishments
Building on a long tradition of excellence, Stegner Center faculty continue to engage in today’s cutting-edge issues through legal education, publications, and service. Below are highlights from this year.
Tony Anghie
Tony Anghie participated in an International Law Association (ILA) program on Global Governance/Multilateralism.
Lingxi Chenyang
Resilient Carbon, 53 Envt’l L. Rep. __ (2023).
Authored opinion article Carbon offsets should also make communities more resilient to climate change, Salt Lake Tribune, (2023).
Jorge Contreras
Authored the chapter Genetic Patents and the Sustainable Development Goals, in The Elgar Companion on Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development, Amani, Ncube, Rimmer, eds. (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2024).
Brigham Daniels
Why Stop Grazing the Climate Commons?, 13 Mich. J. Envtl. & Admin. L.C. L. Rev. __ (2023).
Disaster Vulnerability, 65 B.C. L. Rev. 957 (2022) (with Lisa Grow Sun, Doug Spencer, Natalie Blade, Chantel Sloan, and Teresa Gomez).
Tim Duane
Tim Duane has been researching how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the application of force majeure doctrines in contract law in the seven states of the Colorado River basin (UT, CO, WY, NM, AZ, NV, and CA). Those contract law doctrines may affect the contractual obligations of the states and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) under both (1) the Colorado Compact and (2) USBR water delivery contracts as the USBR implements changes to its operation of Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Duane has also been evaluating the legal vulnerability and likelihood of litigation by key stakeholders for USBR’s two primary operational alternatives in its Supplemental EIS.
Leslie Francis
Leslie Francis has finished her book manuscript (with John Francis) titled States of Health: Federalism and Bioethics. The book has a full chapter on how states differ on important public health measures, including measures related to environmental health—and the consequences of these differences for health. The book is in the editorial process at Oxford University Press and will be published around the end of the year.
Erika George
Presented “Europe’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive: Catalyzing Climate Action and Advancing Just Transition,” NOVA School of Law, Lisbon Portugal (September 2022).
Keynote address: “Incorporating Rights: Business Responsibility and Human Right to a Healthy Environment,” Netherlands Institute for Law and Governance Conference on Business, Human Rights and the Living Environment, Wageningen University, The Netherlands (June 2022).
Author Meets Reader Conversation with Brit Wray, author of Generation Dread Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis.
Discussant at the 2023 Tanner Lecture on Human Values with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future.
Robert Keiter
Authored the chapter The ‘Marks of Human Passage’: Lessons from the Dinosaur and Bears Ears National Monument Controversies, in Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West, Mark Fiege et al., eds., (Univ. of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).
Presented “Outdoor Recreation on the Public Lands,” Boise State University, Andrus Center Conference on “Re-Creating Public Land Recreation,” Boise, ID (April 2023).
Nancy McLaughlin
Laws Governing Restrictions On Charitable Gifts: The Consequences Of Codification, UCLA Law Rev. Discourse (forthcoming 2023).
Presented on the Restatement of the Law of Nonprofit Charitable Organizations (Am. Law Inst. 2021), for which McLaughlin served as associate reporter, at a Harvard Law School Library Book Tax in March 2023.
Over the past year, McLaughlin served as an expert witness in a high-profile class-action lawsuit against promoters of syndicated conservation easement donation transactions, which the Senate Finance Committee has condemned as abusive tax shelters.
Quoted regarding conservation easement overvaluation in How Trump’s Dubious Tax Break for Donated Land Paid Off, The Daily Beast (Apr. 20, 2023).
Quoted regarding recently-published safe harbor provisions for conservation easement deeds in Land Trusts Want More Answers on IRS’s Easement Safe Harbors, Tax Notes (Apr. 18, 2023).
Tom Mitchell
Tom Mitchell continues to research and write on oil and gas issues and contribute his expertise to the Stegner Center’s Law & Policy Program. He has recently published two articles for the Law & Policy Program blog, including The Cost of Denial About Carbon Capture and Sequestration and Piecing Together the Fragmented Legal Doctrines Governing ‘Pore Space.’
Ruhan Nagra
Regulatory Theater: How Investor-Owned Utilities and Captured Oversight Agencies Perpetuate Environmental Injustice, 25 CUNY L. Rev. 355 (2022).
Presented “Using Interdisciplinary, Multimodal Advocacy to Advance Environmental Justice in Louisiana” for the University of Utah’s Global Change & Sustainability Center.
Beth Parker
Indigenizing the Right to a Healthy Environment, __ Pace Environmental Law Review__ (forthcoming 2023) (with Heather Tanana).
Presented “Indigenous Efforts to Advance the Human Right to a Healthy Environment” at Pace Environmental Law Review’s Symposium on Environmental Constitutionalism, White Plains, NY (October 28, 2022).
Co-authored amicus brief in Arizona v. Navajo Nation (No. 21-1484) and Dep’t of Interior v. Navajo Nation (No. 22-51) (with Heather Tanana).
Jamie Pleune
Playing the Long Game: Expediting Permitting Without Compromising Protections, 52 Env. L. Rep. 10893 (2022).
Creating a Transparent Methodology for Measuring Success within a Continuum of Conservation for the America the Beautiful Initiative, __ George Washington J. Energy & Envt’l L. R. __ (forthcoming 2023).
Danya Rumore
Environmental Dispute Resolution: Past, Present, and Future, ABA Dispute Resolution Magazine, April (2023) (with Michele Straube).
Rumore has been publishing a series of blog posts on how to make conflict productive on the EDR Blog.
The Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative, which Rumore founded and serves as co-director of, has been featured in media outlets including BBC News, USA Today, NBC News, and others. Rumore also received a $110,000 grant from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities to translate her research on Western gateway communities into tools and resources to help these communities protect the things that make them special amid increasing tourism and development pressure.
John Ruple
Accepted a detail to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he is serving as senior counsel. He is on leave but remains on the College of Law faculty during his service at CEQ.
Heather Tanana
Voices of the River: The Rise of Indigenous Women Leaders in the Colorado River Basin, __ Colorado Envt. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2023).
Co-authored amicus brief in Arizona v. Navajo Nation (No. 21-1484) and Dep’t of Interior v. Navajo Nation (No. 22-51).
Featured in numerous local, national, and international media outlets on tribal water rights in the Colorado River Basin, including NPR, USA Today, High Country News, Deseret News, and Al Jazeera.
Elizabeth Kronk Warner
Laboratories of the Future: Tribes and Rights of Nature, 111 California L. Rev. 2 (2023) with Jensen Lillquist.