Robin Craig
USC Gould School of Law

Robin Craig specializes in all things water, including the relationships between climate change and water; the water-energy-food nexus; the Clean Water Act; the intersection of water issues and land issues; ocean and coastal law; marine biodiversity and marine protected areas; water law; ecological resilience and the law; climate change adaptation, and the relationships between environmental law and public health. She is the author, co-author, or editor of 12 books, including Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean (University of Utah Press, forthcoming, with Jeffrey M. McCarthy); The End of Sustainability (Kansas University Press 2017, with Melinda Harm Benson); Contemporary Issues in Climate Change Law and Policy (Environmental Law Institute 2016, with Stephen Miller); Comparative Ocean Governance: Place- Based Protections in an Era of Climate Change (Edward Elgar 2012); and The Clean Water Act and the Constitution (Environmental Law Institute 2nd Ed. 2009), as well as textbooks for environmental law, water law, and toxic torts. She has also written more than 100 law review articles and book chapters in both legal and scientific publications.

In recognition of her work on these topics, Craig was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 2015 and the American College of Environmental Lawyers in 2019 and has been appointed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Environmental Law and to the Center for Progressive Reform. She has served on six National Academy of Sciences committees that evaluated Florida Everglades restoration, implementation of the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, and application of the Clean Water Act to the Mississippi River. She has consulted on water quality issues with the government of Victoria, Australia, and the Council on Environmental Cooperation in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and she was one of 12 marine educators chosen to participate in a 2010 program in the Papahanamokuakea Marine National Monument, spending a week on Midway Atoll. She was also a principal researcher in a four-year grant project on Adaptive Water Governance sponsored by the National Social-Ecological Synthesis Center with money from the National Science Foundation. In 2018, Craig was named a William Evans Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. In 2017, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded her a Bellagio Center Writing Residency fellowship, allowing her to spend four weeks on Lake Como, Italy, working on a new book project on Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Oceans, and in 2016 she was a research fellow at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.

Craig is an active participant in several national organizations, including the American Bar Association Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources (ABA SEER), where she currently serves on the editorial board of Natural Resources & Environment; the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, where she co-chairs the Natural Resources Law Teachers Committee; and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), where she has chaired the Maritime Law Section, the Natural Resources Law Section and the Environmental Law Section. She has also served as a consultant to the Environmental Defense Fund and the River Network’s Nutrient Task Force. Craig serves as an editorial board member of Case Studies in the Environment and Coastal and Ocean Management, specialty chief editor of Frontiers Climate: Climate Law and Policy, guest associate editor for Frontiers Climate: Risk Management on the topic of “Climate Change Adaptation as Risk Mangement,” and as the series editor for the Wallace Stegner Series on Environmental Studies at the University of Utah Press.

Craig earned her JD summa cum laude in 1996 from the Lewis & Clark School of Law in Portland, Oregon, with a Certificate in Environmental Law; her PhD in English/literature and science in 1993 from the University of California, Santa Barbara; her MA in writing about science in 1986 from the Johns Hopkins University; and her BA cum laude in English/writing in 1985 from Pomona College in Claremont, California. While in law school, she worked for the Oregon Department of Justice in its general counsel division, natural resources section, representing the state’s environmental and natural resources agencies. After law school, she clerked for Judge Robert E. Jones at the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon before starting her law teaching career as a visiting assistant professor at the Lewis & Clark School of Law. Before arriving at USC Gould School of Law in 2021, Craig held tenure-track positions at the Western New England College School of Law; Indiana University—Indianapolis School of Law (where she first received tenure); the Florida State University School of Law; and the University of Utah S.J. Quinney School of Law. She has visited at the Lewis & Clark School of Law, Vermont Law School, the University of Hawaii School of Law, and the University of Tasmania Faculty of Law. At Gould, Professor Craig teaches environmental law, water law, ocean and coastal law, toxic torts, and civil procedure.

Twitter: 

@ProfRobinCraig

Works in Progress

• Re-Envisioning The Anthropocene Ocean (forthcoming) (with Jeffery M. McCarthy), editor.
• Native Peoples and the Sea
• Marine Aquaculture that Benefits the Environment

Books

• Environmental Law in Context: Cases and Materials, 5th edition, (Thomson Reuters West, 2021).
• The End of Sustainability: Resilience and the Future of Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene (University of Kansas Press, 2017) (with Melinda Harm Benson).

Book Chapters

• "Remembering the Ocean in Water Law, in A Research Agenda for Water Law (Vanessa Casado Perez & Rhett Larson, eds.) (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2023). 
• "Comparing Approaches to Water Quality Regulation, in Comparative Environmental Law Research Handbook (Tseming Yang, ed.) (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2023). 
• "Children Narrating the Future: Climate Change Activism as a Civil Rights Movement," Chapter 8 in Good Stories: Telling Against Trouble (Lois Presser, Jennifer Fleetwood, & Sveinung Sandberg, eds.) (NYU Press, forthcoming 2023). 
• "Introduction: Why Re-Envision the Anthropocene Ocean?," in Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean (Robin Kundis Craig & Jeffrey M. McCarthy, eds.) (University of Utah Press, forthcoming 2022).
• "Re-Envisioning the Value of Marine Spaces in Law: Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association v. Ross," in Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean (Robin Kundis Craig & Jeffrey M. McCarthy, eds.) (University of Utah Press, forthcoming 2022).
• "Conclusion: Ocean Wildlife Photography as a Metaphor for the Anthropocene Ocean," in Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean (Robin Kundis Craig & Jeffrey M. McCarthy, eds.) (University of Utah Press, forthcoming 2022).
• "Panarchy and Law in the Anthropocene," (with Barbara Cosens, Ahjond Garmestani, and J.B. Ruhl) in Applied Panarchy: Applications and Diffusions Across Disciplines (Lance Gunderson, Craig Allen, and Dirac Twidwell, eds.) (Island Press, 2022).
• "New Realities Require New Priorities: Heading Off the Climate Dystopia Death Spirals by Re-Prioritizing the Environment and Environmental Law," (with J.B. Ruhl) in Environmental Law Beyond 2020 (Jessica Owley & Keith Hirokawa, eds.) (ELI Press, 2021). - (SSRN)
• "Environmental Law, Disrupted by COVID-19," (with Rebecca Bratspies, Vanessa Casado Perez,  Lissa Griffin, Keith Hirokawa, Sarah Krakoff, Katrina Kuh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J.B. Ruhl, Erin Ryan, & David Takacs) in Environmental Law Beyond 2020 (Jessica Owley & Keith Hirokawa, eds.) (ELI Press, 2021).
• "Mitigation and Adaptation," in The Law of the Sea and Climate Change: Part of the Solution or Representing Constraints? (Ingvild U. Jakobsen, Elise Johansen, and Signe Busch, eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2020). - (www)
• "George Perkins Marsh: Anticipating the Anthropocene," in Pioneers of Environmental Law (Jan Laitos & John Nagle, eds.) (Twelve Tables Press, 2020). - (SSRN)
• "Zero Sum Games in Pollution Control: Ecological Thresholds, Planetary Boundaries, and Policy Choices," in Beyond Zero-Sum Environmentalism (Sarah Krakoff, Melissa Powers, and Jonathan Rosenbloom, eds.) (ELI Press, 2019). - (SSRN)
• "Sea-Level Rise, Storm Surge, and Public Health," in Climate Change, Public Health, and the Law (Michael Burger & Justin Gundlach, eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Articles

• “Tribal Water Rights and Tribal Health: The Klamath Tribes and the Navajo Nation During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” St. Louis University Journal of Health Law and Policy (forthcoming 2023).  - (SSRN)
• “There Is More to the Clean Water Act Than Waters of the United States: A Holistic Jurisdictional Approach to the Section 402 and Section 404 Permit Programs,” Case Western Reserve Law Review (forthcoming 2023). - (SSRN)
• “Fish, Whales, and a Blue Ethics for the Anthropocene: How Do We Think About the Last Wild Food in the 21st Century?,” 96 Southern California Law Review (2022).  - (SSRN)
• “The Clean Water Act and the Ocean: An Unfulfilled Promise,” Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Law (2022).  - (SSRN)
• "The Regulatory Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Vaccines, Generational Amnesia, and the Shifting Perception of Risks in Public Law Regimes," 21 Yale Journal of Health Law, Policy, and Ethics (2022). - (SSRN)
• "Promoting 'Climate Change Plus' Industries Through the Administrative State: The Case of Marine Aquaculture," Yale Journal on Regulation (2022). - (SSRN)
• "How Law Structures Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making: A Comparative Approach," (with Sanne Akerboom) Environmental Policy and Governance (2022). - (www)
• "Re-Valuing the Ocean in Law: Exploiting the Panarchy Paradox of a Complex System Approach," Stanford Environmental Law Journal (forthcoming 2022). - (SSRN)
• "4°C," (with J.B. Ruhl) 106 Minnesota Law Review 191 (2021). - (SSRN)
• "Connecting Ecosystem Services Science and Policy in the Field," (with J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman, Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Keith Hirokawa, Lydia Olander, Margaret C. Palmer, & Taylor Ricketts) 19(9) Frontiers in Ecology & Environment 519 (2021). - (www)
• "Learning to Live with the Trickster in New Zealand: U.S. and New Zealand Fisheries Law in the Anthropocene," Resource Management Theory & Practice (2021).
• "Resilience Theory and Wicked Problems," 73(6) Vanderbilt Law Review 1733 (2020). - (SSRN) - (PDF)
• "Adaptive Management for Ecosystem Services at Wildland-Urban Interface," (with J.B. Ruhl) 14(1) International Journal of the Commons 611 (2020). - (SSRN) - (www)
• "Hurricanes and the National Flood Insurance Program: Is Congress Paying Attention?," 34(3) Probate & Property 24 (2020). - (www)
• "Warming Oceans, Coastal Diseases, and Climate Change Public Health Adaptation," 10(1) Sea Grant Law & Policy Journal 3 (2020). - (SSRN) - (PDF)

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

LLM Guide
June 5, 2023
Re: USC Gould School of Law

Law schools have been adapting to the increase in technological advancements, especially with the increased need for attorneys with the creation of AI. “Attorneys work on the front end, conducting threat assessments to ensure that their clients’ systems and data are protected, and on the back end, to navigate any legal issues that may arise as a result of the attacks," Gruzas said.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
May, 2023

"Did Sackett Bring Clarity to 'Waters of the United States'?," 54:6 Trends (forthcoming July/August 2023) (accepted May 31, 2023).

Robin Craig
May, 2023

"Tribal Water Rights and Tribal Health: the Klamath Tribes and the Navajo Nation During the Covid-19 Pandemic," 16 Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy 35 (published 2023), was summarized and promoted on the Race, Racism, and the Law website run by Professor Vernellia Randall, University of Dayton School of Law.

Robin Craig
May, 2023

"Governing Shifting Species and Changing Ecosystems: What role Might Ecological Grief Play?," keynote address at the Species on the Move 2023 International Conference, Bonito Springs, Florida, on May 19, 2023.