Robin Kundis Craig

Robin Kundis Craig is the Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Professor Craig is a nationally recognized for her work in all things water. Topics she writes about include the Clean Water Act; climate change and water resources, especially in terms of climate change adaptation; the connection between fresh water regulation and ocean water quality; marine biodiversity and marine protected areas; property rights in fresh water, especially public rights and the state public trust doctrines; the intersection of water and energy policies; and science and water resource protection.

As a result of her Clean Water Act work, including her book The Clean Water Act and the Constitution (Environmental Law Institute 2d edition 2009), the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has appointed her, since 2005, to three successive committees to assess the relationship between that Act, water quality in the Mississippi River, and Gulf of Mexico hypoxia. Professor Craig is the sole author of an environmental law text, Environmental Law in Cotext (Thomson/West 2d ed. 2008; 3rd edition forthcoming 2012) and has published more than 50 law review articles and book chapters, as well as numerous shorter works. She is currently working on two new books: Toxic and Environmental Torts: Cases and Materials (with Andrew Klein, Michael Green, and Joseph Sanders), due out from Thomson/West in 2011; and Comparative Ocean Governance: Place-Based Marine Protections in an Era of Climate Change, due out from Edward Elgar Press in 2012.

Professor Craig was the Distinguished Environmental Visitor at Vermont Law School in July 2009 and a Visiting Summer Professor at the University of Hawaii School of Law in 2010. She was also the James I. Farr Presidential Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law until 2021. Professor Craig regularly teaches Environmental Law, Water Law, Florida Water Law, Civil Procedure, Toxic Torts, Environmental Litigation, and a variety of seminars, including Public Rights in Water and the Environmental Intersection of Land and Sea. She has also taught International Environmental Law, International Biodiversity Law, the Clean Water Act (seminar), Ocean and Coastal Law, Administrative Law, Property, and Bioethics and Biotechnology.

Professor Craig is active in the American Bar Association’s Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources and currently serves as Chair of the Marine Resources Committee and Vice Chair of the Constitutional Environmental Law Committee. Before entering law school teaching, she clerked for the Honorable Robert E. Jones at the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and worked in the Natural Resources Section, General Counsel Division, Oregon Department of Justice.