Faculty
Don C. Smith
Lecturer and Director
Director, Environmental & Natural Resources Law & Policy Graduate Program
Don C. Smith is the Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law JD and Graduate Programs at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He specializes in environmental law, with particular emphasis on environmental law and policy of the European Union.
Mr. Smith formerly worked as a water policy advisor for Kansas Gov. John W. Carlin. After leaving Gov. Carlin’s office he served as the governor’s appointee to the Kansas Water Commission.
He practiced natural resources law before joining the legal publishing arm of McGraw-Hill, where he was an associate publisher. He has also served as a publisher for an Anglo-Dutch publishing company, Reed-Elsevier, where he was responsible for a series of publications (e.g., “The Air Pollution Consultant” and “The Hazardous Waste Consultant”) about U.S. environmental law. He has also had extensive experience working on publications involving European Union environmental and energy policy.
He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, the Colorado Bar Association, the International Bar Association (IBA), and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation.
He serves as editor-in-editor of the "Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law":http://www.ibanet.org/Publications/publications_journal_of_energy_and_natural_resources_law.aspx, a peer-reviewed publication affiliated with the Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law Section of the IBA. He serves on the editorial advisory board for the Manual of European Environmental Policy.
Mr. Smith and Judge David Edward, who served on the Court of Justice of the European Union from 1992-2004, have collaborated on a “first of its kind” web-based oral history involving the life and career of Judge Edward. The oral history includes nearly 15 hours of streaming video and audio as well as the full-text of nearly 100 articles written by Judge Edward, who is widely recognized as one of the most influential judges ever to sit on the Court of Justice.
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the April 1951 signing of the Treaty of Paris, which established the European Coal and Steel Community, he produced a documentary "Jean Monnet: Father of Europe":http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/jean-monnet-father-of-europe/documentary. The documentary features the life and career of Mr. Monnet, whose ideas established the underpinnings of today’s European Union. The documentary was filmed in Europe.
Fred Cheever
Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor
Federico Cheever is Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. After graduating from Stanford University (B.A./M.A. 1981) and UCLA (J.D. 1986), and clerking for Judge Harry Pregerson of United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Los Angeles (1986-1987), he came to Denver as an Associate Attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (1987-1989). With a few exceptions, he has been in Denver ever since. In 1990, he briefly commuted to Boulder to be a Research Fellow at Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado School of Law. Between 1990 and 1993, he was an associate at the law firm Faegre & Benson, in Denver, doing commercial and environmental litigation. He began teaching at the University of Denver College of Law in 1993 specializing in Environmental Law, Wildlife Law, Public Land Law, Land Conservation Transactions and Property. Professor Cheever served as the Hughes/Rudd Research Professor at the University of Denver College of Law 2002. He briefly left Denver again in 2000 to be a Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. He served as a Visiting Professor at Northwestern Law School, Lewis & Clark College during the summer of 2005. In 2007 he was a visiting research fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra, ACT. From 2005-2007 he served as an adjunct professor at the Colorado School of Mines, teaching Environmental Law. In 2006 he was selected DU Law Star for excellence in teaching.
Professor Cheever writes extensively about the Endangered Species Act, federal public land law and land conservation transactions. He has recently co-authored a natural resources casebook, Natural Resources Law: A Place-Based Book of Problems and Cases, with Christine Klein and Bret Birdsong (2005).
Over the years, Professor Cheever has represented environmental groups in cases under the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act and a number of other environmental laws. While in private practice he also represented regulated parties in disputes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Clean Air Act.
K.K. DuVivier
Professor
K.K. DuVivier graduated cum laude from Williams College with a double major in English and Geology. She interned in the mineral departments of the Smithsonian Institution and the Hudson River Museum and then joined the American subsidiary of the French company COGEMA (currently Areva NC) as an exploration geologist. For three and a half years, she mapped, logged core, and coordinated field operations in Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico, before leaving to attend law school at the University of Denver. She received the Order of St. Ives when she graduated in 1982 and immediately started practice in natural resources law, first at Sherman & Howard and then at Arnold & Porter.
While her children were young, Prof. DuVivier worked as an Assistant City Attorney for the City and County of Denver and as the Reporter of Decisions for the Colorado Court of Appeals. She started full-time teaching at the University of Colorado School of Law in 1990, and she joined the faculty at DU in 2000. She has taught a variety of subjects over the years, including Civil Procedure, Legal Research & Writing, Local Government, Wills & Trusts, and Environmental Law. She served as Director of DU’s Lawyering Process Program from 2000 to 2007 and hosted the 2007 Association of Legal Writing Director’s Conference. In 2008, she returned to natural resources, teaching both Energy Law and Mining Law. From 2009-2010, she was designated Director of DU Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program.
Prof. DuVivier currently is Vice-Chair of Public Service for the Renewable, Alternative, and Distributed Energy Resources (RADER) Committee of the Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) and is Treasurer of the AALS Natural Resources Section. Her past service includes six years as Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association, Hard Minerals Committee, and ten years as Chair or Vice-Chair of the Appellate Practice Subcommittee of the Litigation Section of the Colorado Bar Association. She has presented at several national conferences and has published numerous journal articles including for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation as a short course participant, in the Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, and in the ABA-SONREL Publication, Natural Resources & Environment. In 2006, she was inducted as a member of the American Law Institute.
In 2008, Prof. DuVivier and her husband, Lance Wright, designed and built a near zero energy home following German Passive House principles.
Michael Harris
Assistant Professor
Director of the Environmental Law Clinic
Michael Harris is Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He received a B.A. in Environmental and Political Studies from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, a M.S.L. from Vermont Law School, and a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California-Berkeley, where he was an Executive Editor for the Ecology Law Quarterly. Before coming to Denver, Professor Harris was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Vermont Law School, where he taught Air Pollution Law & Policy and Administrative Law. Professor Harris’ career has focused exclusively on the practice of environmental law, much of it working directly on litigation to protect public health and natural resources.
Professor Harris’ scholarship focuses on reforming administrative process to help restore trustworthiness to regulatory lawmaking and government. In addition to teaching in the Environmental Law Clinic, Professor Harris teaches a fall environmental justice seminar and a spring section of administrative law.
Jan G. Laitos
John A Carver, Jr. Professor of Law
Jan Laitos holds the John A. Carver Jr. Chair at the Sturm College of Law. He is a Reporter for the Planning and Environmental Law Review (published by the American Planning Association); a regional board member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute; and Trustee of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law foundation. He was Vice Chair of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission. In 1996, he was given the University of Denver’s distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2005, he was selected a “DU Law Star.” Prior to joining the faculty at the Law school, he was the law clerk to the Chief Justice for the Colorado Supreme Court, and an attorney with the Office of Legal Counsel within the United States Department of Justice. He is the author of twelve books and treatises, published by West, Foundation Press, Aspen, Oxford University Press, Duke University Press, and Bradford Press.
He has worked as a consultant on several cases decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Federal appeals, the Montana Supreme Court, the Nevada Supreme Court, the Idaho Supreme court, and the Colorado Supreme Court, and on several cert. petitions before the United States Supreme Court.
He has lectured at Austral University Law School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the European Network For Housing Research Institute in Istanbul, Turkey, at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, the National University of Ireland at Galway, Ireland, and the University of Oslo, Norway.
Kevin Lynch
Assistant Professor
Kevin Lynch graduated magna cum laude from Rice University before attending New York University School of Law, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the NYU Environmental Law Journal and graduated magna cum laude. Professor Lynch joined the faculty in 2009 as the Environmental Law Clinical Fellow, and he currently still teaches in the Environmental Law Clinic. Prior to attending law school, he worked in the energy industry, and before joining the faculty he was a junior attorney at Environmental Defense Fund’s office in Boulder, Colorado. Professor Lynch has experience working at the state and federal level on regulatory and permitting issues related to climate change, air quality, and energy policy, as well as litigation experience in federal courts regarding air pollution, public lands, and wildlife. His scholarship focuses on civil procedure and access to courts.
Justin Pidot
Assistant Professor
Justin Pidot graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University before attending Stanford Law School, where he graduated with distinction and was editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Professor Pidot clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to joining the University of Denver faculty, he was an appellate litigator at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he presented argument in more than a dozen federal appellate cases and acted as the staff attorney on two cases before the United States Supreme Court. Professor Pidot also completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute.
Professor Pidot’s scholarship and teaching focus on environmental law, natural resources law, and federal courts. His current research examines the unique procedures federal courts use to assess their own jurisdiction.
Rock W. Pring
Professor
Rock Pring specializes in environmental and natural resources issues internationally and nationally. He teaches, publishes, and serves as a consultant to governments and public-interest organizations on sustainable development, human rights, mining and resource development, environmental impact assessment, compliance, and remediation, and nature preservation. His courses include International Environmental Law, International Water Law, Public Land and Resources Law, and Constitutional Law.
He and his wife Kitty Pring co-direct the University of Denver Environmental Courts and Tribunals Study (at "www.law.du.edu/ect-study":/index.php/ect-study), and have authored the first comparative book on this exploding phenomenon, Greening Justice: Creating and Improving Environmental Courts and Tribunals. Professors Pring has co-authored (with Professor Ved Nanda) a leading treatise on International Environmental Law as well as numerous other publications in the field. He co-authored (with Professor Penelope Canan) the National Science Foundation-funded book, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out, which first named and drew international attention to the problem of “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” in government or “SLAPPs” – lawsuits to chill citizens’ communications to government.
He is former US Representative to the Academic Advisory Group of the International Bar Association’s Section on Energy, Environment, and Resources Law, past-Chair of the State of Colorado Hazardous Waste Commission, retired Adjunct Professor in the graduate Environmental Science and Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines; and co-founder and Vice President for Conservation of the Clear Creek Land Conservancy.
Tom I. Romero, II
Hughes-Rudd Research Professor, 2012-2013
On Sabbatical, Spring 2013
Professor Romero teaches and researches in the areas of the legal history of the American West, Latinos and the law, school desegregation in multiracial contexts, property, land use, water law, and urban development and local government in the United States and Latin America. His work on such topics have appeared in the _Colorado Law Review_, the _Utah Law Review_, the _New Mexico Law Review_, the _Albany Law Review_, the _Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice_, the _Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review_, the _Seattle Journal for Social Justice_, the _Oregon Review of International Law_, and the _Chicano-Latino Law Review_, among others. A native Denverite and undergraduate alum of the University of Denver, Dr. Romero is graduate of the University of Michigan where he received his J.D. and Ph.D. in history.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2010, Dr. Romero was a Professor of Law and History at Hamline University School of Law. From 2000-2003, he also served as the Western Legal Studies Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Center of the American West, Law School and Department of History. There, he completed a statewide survey of resources related to the legal history of Colorado and wrote a regular “historical perspective” column for the state bar journal, _The Colorado Lawyer_.
At the University of Michigan, Dr. Romero acted as a contributing editor of the _Michigan Journal of Race and Law_, worked with the legal counsel of the student interveners in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 US 244 (2003), and spent time in Lima, Peru as a consultant on 19th century American property law for Hernando De Soto in his book: _The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else_. As part of this project, Dr. Romero also collaborated with Peruvian civil lawyers and their work in formalizing title to property that is occupied by families and individuals possessing tracts of land.
Currently, Dr. Romero is revising a book manuscript on multiracial formation and the law in post-World War II Denver, Colorado; where among other aspect of the analysis, he extensively explores Keyes v. School Board No. One, 413 US 189 (1973) (the first non-Southern school desegregation case to reach the United States Supreme Court). In collaboration with the Denver Law Review, Dr. Romero has helped to put together a special "symposium":http://www.denverlawreview.org/keyes-symposium analyzing the impact and importance of the Keyes case since it was decided in 1973.
Dr. Romero is on the Board of Directors of the Colorado Latino Leadership Advocacy & Research Organization (CLLARO) and is an active member of LatCrit, Inc., Law and Society, the American Studies Association, the Western History Association, and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
William Shutkin
Former Lecturer and Director, Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, --
A global leader in sustainability and social entrepreneurship, Bill is the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute and a Lecturer at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where the Institute is based. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Bill has led several organizations at the nexus of environmental protection, community development and sustainability, including the nation’s premier environmental justice center, Boston-based Alternatives for Community & Environment; the pioneering green development research and consulting organization New Ecology, Inc., among the first to successfully make the business case for green, energy-efficient community development; the Orton Family Foundation, an operating foundation with a sustainable land use planning mission; and, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the world’s fastest growing sustainable business trade association with over 60 member networks across the U.S. and Canada committed to zero-waste, green business strategies. He is also an Associate of the Citistates Group, the nation’s foremost think-tank and speakers’ bureau for metropolitanism and regional development, and on the Advisory Board of NRDC’s Smarter Cities.
Bill taught environmental policy and planning from 1999-2004 at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He was an Adjunct Professor from 1993-2004 at Boston College Law School and has taught at Tufts University and Northeastern University School of Law. Bill has lectured and consulted around the world on environmental policy and sustainable development and is the author of the award-winning book, The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, and A Republic of Trees: Field Notes on People, Place, and the Planet. He is also a published poet. Bill has been a commentator for Vermont Public Radio, a contributing writer for Northern Woodlands magazine and has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and on National Public Radio, as well as in the book, Eco-Pioneers: Practical Visionaries Solving Today's Environmental Problems. David Brower described Bill as “an environmental visionary creating solutions to today's problems with a passion that would make John Muir and Martin Luther King equally proud.”
Bill earned an AB in History and Classics from Brown University, an MA in History and JD from the University of Virginia and completed doctoral studies in Jurisprudence and Social Policy as a Regents Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a law clerk to Chief Judge Franklin S. Billings, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont.
Annecoos Wiersema
Associate Professor
Annecoos Wiersema received her first law degree (LL.B.) from the London School of Economics in England and her S.J.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science) degree in International and Environmental Law from Harvard Law School.
Prof. Wiersema teaches and researches in the fields of international environmental law, environmental and natural resources law, international law, administrative law and theory, and property law and theory. Her research focuses on how we can develop legal institutions both nationally and internationally that can effectively protect species and ecosystems in the face of ecological complexity and scientific uncertainty.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Prof. Wiersema was an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law and worked in the Denver office of Arnold and Porter LLP as a litigation associate. Prof. Wiersema was the George W. Foley, Jr. Fellow in Environmental Law at Harvard Law School from 1999-2000 and spent time as a Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2001.