Rate My Professor David Spence

David B. Spence holds the Rex G. Baker Centennial Chair in Natural Resources Law at the University of Texas School of Law and serves as Professor of Law and Regulation in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, positions he has held since 1997. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Gettysburg College in 1980, a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1984, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Duke University in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Early in his career, Spence practiced as an attorney specializing in environmental and energy regulatory law at Nixon Peabody from 1984 to 1991. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2007), Georgetown University Law Center (2017), Cornell University Law School (2001), and Vanderbilt University Law School (1999), and served as Visiting Assistant Professor/Instructor in Duke University's Resource Economics and Policy Graduate Program from 1995 to 1997.

Spence specializes in energy law, administrative law, environmental law, and oil and gas law, with research centered on the law and politics of energy regulation in both fossil fuel and clean energy sectors. He authored Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship (Columbia University Press, 2024), which received the 2025 Hamilton Book Award. Spence co-authored the leading energy law casebook Energy, Economics and the Environment: Cases and Materials (6th ed., Foundation Press, 2024; 5th ed., 2015), and has published influential articles such as 'Naïve Administrative Law: Complexity, Polarization and Climate Policy' (Yale Journal on Regulation, 2022), 'The New Politics of Energy Market Entry' (Notre Dame Law Review, 2019), 'Paradoxes of Decarbonization' (Brooklyn Law Review, 2017), 'Ideology vs. Interest Group Politics in U.S. Energy Policy' (North Carolina Law Review, 2017, with David E. Adelman), 'The Regulatory Contract in the Marketplace' (Vanderbilt Law Review, 2016, with Emily Hammond), and 'Old Statutes, New Problems' (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2014, with Jody Freeman). His scholarship addresses political polarization, regulatory design, market entry, and economic impacts on energy policy. Spence has earned teaching accolades including multiple McCombs School MBA Teaching Honor Rolls (2002, 2003, 2008, 2011), the 2011-12 Fawn and Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence Award for Executive Education, and the 2001-02 CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors. He teaches courses on regulating energy markets, energy law, business-government relations, and corporate social responsibility.