David Adelman

David Adelman, the Harry Reasoner Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, joined the faculty in 2009 following his tenure as Associate Professor of Law at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law from 2001 to 2009. Prior to entering academia, he served as an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., where he litigated patent disputes and provided counsel on environmental regulatory matters, and as a Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Adelman holds a B.A. in chemistry and physics from Reed College, where he was a DuPont Graduate Scholar in Chemistry and elected to Phi Beta Kappa; a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University, focusing on chemical reaction dynamics; and a J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School, serving as articles editor for the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He clerked for the Honorable Samuel Conti of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Adelman's scholarship centers on environmental law, administrative law, and climate change and energy policy, frequently incorporating empirical analyses of litigation, environmental law implementation, and the integration of science into regulatory policymaking. His work explores topics such as the implications of genomic technologies for toxics regulation, inequities in environmental citizen suits, tensions between private environmental governance and trademark law, and strategies for leveraging federalism to foster climate innovation. Publications include “Permitting Reform’s False Choice,” 50 Ecology L.Q. 3 (2024); “The Misleading Successes of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy,” 13 Mich. J. Envtl. & Admin. L. 1 (2024); “Environmental Citizen Suits and the Inequities of Races to the Top” (with Jori Reilly-Diakun), 92 U. Colo. L. Rev. 377 (2021); “Trademarks & Private Environmental Governance” (with Graeme W. Austin), 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 709 (2017); and “U.S. Climate Policy and the Regional Economics of Electricity Generation” (with David B. Spence), 120 Energy Policy 268 (2018). Several articles have been honored as among the top three of the year by the Environmental Law Institute. In December 2024, he was awarded a three-year, $345,000 grant by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to extend research on permitting for renewable energy infrastructure, in collaboration with Columbia University. Adelman teaches Administrative Law, U.S. Environmental Law, Energy Development and Policy, and an interdisciplinary course on legal due diligence and project finance for energy projects.

Professional Email: dadelman@law.utexas.edu