Faculty Advisors

Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California at Davis. Staff Director of the Governor's Commission to Review California Water Rights Law (1977-78). Member, California Water Commission (1981-82). Chair, Steering Committee for a water resources initiative on the California ballot in November 1982. Member, Bay-Delta Advisory Commission (1996-2001). Recipient, Clyde O. Martz Award for Natural Resources Law Teaching (2004). Currently on the boards of The Bay Institute of San Francisco, the Water Education Foundation and the board of the Tuolumne River Trust.

 

Environment (CLEE) at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law

Mr. Frank, who joined the U.C. Berkeley Law School faculty in 2006, also serves as a Lecturer in Residence at the law school, where he teaches courses in environmental law and climate change. Before coming to CLEE and U.C. Berkeley, Mr. Frank practiced law with federal and state agencies for 32 years, most of that time with the California Department of Justice. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served California’s Chief Deputy Attorney General for Legal Affairs. In addition to his duties at Berkeley Law, Mr. Frank is Of Counsel to the Resources Law Group, an environmental law firm in Sacramento, California. In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Mr. Frank to the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the Governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta. He served in that capacity in 2007-08. In May 2009, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board appointed Mr. Frank to the Economic Allocation & Advisory Committee, an advisory body formed to assist the Air Resources Board in implementing California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). Mr. Frank earned his J.D. from the U.C. Davis School of Law in 1974, and his B.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara in 1971.

 

Prof. Brian Gray, UC Hastings College of the Law

Brian Gray is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he teaches water resources, environmental law, public lands and natural resources, and seminars on Property Rights and the Constitution and the American West. He is the author of numerous articles in these fields. Professor Gray was appointed to the 1999-2000 Harry and Lillian Hastings Research Chair, and he is a recipient of the Hastings Outstanding Professor award and the William Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Gray has argued cases on water rights, water contracts, NEPA, CEQA, the Endangered Species Act, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, and other laws before the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and other courts. He is co-author of A Model Water Transfer Act for California and has served as a consultant to the City and County of San Francisco, the California Law Revision Commission, the State of Missouri, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Delta Vision Commission on water and environmental issues. Professor Gray also appeared as an expert on the law of property in the litigation over title to Barry Bonds' 73rd home run. He is currently working on an interdisciplinary study of the future of California water policy with colleagues from the University of California system, Stanford, and the Public Policy Institute of California. He is chair of the board of directors of the Natural Heritage Institute and past chair of the California State Bar Committee on the Environment. In additions, Professor Gray serves as a volunteer tutor at 826 Valencia, a writing and literacy center in San Francisco's Mission District, where he also is Vice President of the board.

 

Prof. Alice Kaswan, University of San Francisco School of Law

Alice Kaswan is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, where she teaches Environmental Law, Administrative Law, and Property. She received her JD from Harvard Law School, and her BS in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarship focuses on climate change, federalism, and environmental justice. Professor Kaswan is a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform. Prior to entering academia, Professor Kaswan practiced land use and environmental law at Berle, Kass & Case in New York City. USF Faculty web-page: http://www.law.usfca.edu/faculty/fulltime/kaswana.html.

 

Paul Kibel, Golden Gate University School of Law; Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley

Paul Stanton Kibel is an Associate Professor at Golden Gate University School of Law, where he teaches Water Law and California Environmental and Natural Resources Law, and a former lecturer in Water Policy at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. He is of counsel and former partner with the environmental and natural resource practice group at Fitizgerald Abbott & Beardsley, and from 2002-2008 he served as co-chair of the Natural Resources Subsection of the Real Property Section of the California State Bar. Kibel is the author of the book The Earth on Trial: Environmental Law on the International Stage (Routledge 1999), and editor of the book Rivertown: Rethinking Urban Rivers (MIT Press 2007). He holds an LLM from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law School.

 

UC Hastings College of the Law

Leshy has been at Hastings since 2001. Previously he was Solicitor (General Counsel) of the U.S. Department of the Interior (1993-2001); Special Counsel to Chairman George Miller of the Resources Committee, U.S. House of Representatives (1992-93); Professor of Law at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona (1980-1992); Associate Solicitor of the Department of the Interior for Energy & Resources (1977-80); and with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in California (1972-77) and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. (1969-72). He co-chaired the Obama-Biden transition team for the Interior Department in 2008-2009. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, books on the Mining Law of 1872 and the Arizona Constitution, and is co-author of casebooks on federal land and resources law and water law. A graduate of Harvard College, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, his alma mater, in 2004, 2006 and 2007.

 

Tony Rossmann, UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law

Antonio Rossmann has served in the past 35 years as counsel in some of California’s and the West’s leading water and land-use proceedings, including the Owens Valley groundwater war, the Mono Lake public trust litigation, South Pasadena’s resistance to the 710 freeway, Nevada’s opposition to the MX missile and the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository, the State Water Project Monterey Amendments challenge, and the Imperial-to-San Diego Colorado River water transfer. Mr. Rossmann, an honors graduate of Harvard College (1963) and Harvard Law School (1971) and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, has taught water resources, land use, and constitutional law for the past 25 years, since 1991 at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall. Previously he taught at Stanford, Hastings, UCLA, and as Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Tokyo. Mr. Rossmann served from 1971 to 1972 as law clerk to Justice Mathew Tobriner of the California Supreme Court. As a naval officer between college and law school, Mr. Rossmann spent four years in East Asia, including two years of combat duty in the Tonkin Gulf.

 

Chief Counsel for the California Department of Water Resources

Mr. Sandino was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. He manages 32 attorneys and works on water, environmental, and energy issues for the Department. The Department operates the largest state-built water project in the United States, the State Water Project. He has served as lead counsel for the California Reclamation Board, which is responsible for flood control protection in the Central Valley. He also served as lead attorney for the Department from 1995-2000 in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta Hearings, which allocated responsibilities to meet environmental water quality standards in the Delta. He has taught water law, environmental law, energy law, real property, and local government law at Santa Clara University School of Law, University of San Francisco School of Law, and Golden Gate University School of Law. He also teaches water law to environmental professionals at the UC Davis Extension and the UCLA Extension. He received a 1999 Fulbright Fellowship and he taught international environmental law at the Moscow State Academy, Moscow, Russia. He is on the Board of Editors of California Environmental Law Reporter, and he has written numerous articles on the environment, water, and land use. He served on the City of Davis Planning Commission and Natural Resources Commission. He currently serves on the City of Davis Policy Advisory Commission, which reviews internal police investigations. He received his A.B. in chemistry from UC Davis in 1980. He continued his education with a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law, where he graduated in 1984. He received his LL.M specializing in pubic international law in 1987, from the University of London, King's College. While in London, he studied under a Rotary Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Education: A.B., 1980, University of California-Davis J.D., 1984, Santa Clara University LL.M., 1987, University of London, King’s College

 

California Public Utilities Commission

John E. Thorson, formerly Assistant Chief Administrative Law Judge, California Public Utilities Commission, recently retired to western Montana. He continues to serve as Federal Water Master for the U.S. District Court (Western Dist., Washington) (Lummi Decree); Chair of the 70-member Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, which is guiding species and ecosystem recovery for the nation's longest river; and senior fellow for the University of Montana's Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. He teaches public policy and alternative dispute resolution at the University of Southern California and the Universidad Anahuac Xalapa (Mexico). He has taught water law at the University of Montana, University of Arizona, and the University of San Francisco. Thorson is co-founder (along with Judge Dan Hurlbutt of Idaho) of Dividing the Waters, now located at the National Judicial College and providing educational services for judges who are involved in water law litigation throughout the United States. Thorson has published books on the Missouri River, Indian water rights, and salinity; and served as Publications Officer for the ABA Section on Environment, Energy & Resources.

 

Linda Vida, UC Berkeley, Water Resources Center Archives

Linda Vida has been the Director of the Water Resources Center Archives (WRCA) located on the UC Berkeley campus for over 16 years. She manages a staff of 3 FTE and is in charge of collection development, outreach, fundraising, administration and special projects. Prior to working at WRCA, Ms. Vida was Head Librarian at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Library in San Francisco (Region 9) and worked under contract for five years. She received her Masters in Library and Information Sciences (MLIS) from UC Berkeley in 1983. She has extensive knowledge of water resource issues and is experienced in using available technology to make information and data accessible to a diverse audience. Find information about WRCA at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA.