Dave Owen

Dave Owen is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at UC College of the Law, San Francisco.

Professor Owen teaches courses in environmental, natural resources, water, and administrative law. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and from Amherst College.

Prior to entering academia, Professor Owen practiced with Rossmann and Moore, a small San Francisco firm that specializes in complex water resource and land use litigation. His practice included work on major water allocation disputes involving the Sacramento/San Joaquin Bay-Delta and the Colorado River as well as the siting controversies surrounding the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. He clerked for Judge Samuel Conti of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Before law school, he worked as a geologist and regulatory compliance auditor for an environmental consulting firm.

Professor Owen’s research addresses a variety of environmental law subjects, including water resource management, administrative implementation of environmental law, and the use of simulation models in environmental law and planning. His recent articles include Trading Dams, 48 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1043 (2015); Interdisciplinary Research and Environmental Law, 41 Ecology L.Q. 887 (2015); Taking Groundwater, 91 Wash. U. L. Rev. 253 (2014); Mapping, Modeling, and the Fragmentation of Environmental Law, 2013 Utah L. Rev. 219 (to be reprinted in 42 Land Use & Envtl. L. Rev. (2015) as one of the top six environmental law articles of 2013-14.) (; Critical Habitat and the Challenge of Regulating Small Harms, 64 Florida L. Rev. 141 (2012) (selected for reprinting in the Environmental Law Policy Annual Review); The Mono Lake Case, the Public Trust Doctrine, and the Administrative State, 45 U.C. Davis. L. Rev. 1099 (2012), Urbanization, Water Quality, and the Regulated Landscape, 82 Colorado L. Rev. 431 (2011), and Probabilities, Planning Failures, and Environmental Law, 84 Tulane L. Rev. 265 (2009) (reprinted in 42 Land Use & Envtl. L. Rev. (2011) as one of the top five environmental law articles of 2009-10.)