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Alejandro Camacho

Chancellor's Professor of Law

Faculty Director, Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources
Joint appointment in Law and Political Science

Alejandro Camacho

Expertise:

Environmental law, natural resource law, land use regulation, biotechnology regulation, regulatory design and government organization, property

Background:

Professor Camacho’s scholarship explores the goals, structures, and processes of regulation, with a particular focus on natural resources and public lands law, pollution control law, and land use regulation. His writing generally considers the role of public participation and scientific expertise in regulation, the allocation of authority and relationships between regulatory institutions, and how the design and goals of legal institutions must and can be reshaped to more effectively account for emerging technologies and the dynamic character of natural and human systems.

His legal scholarship includes articles published or forthcoming in the Virgina Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Emory Law Journal, BYU Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Colorado Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Yale Journal on Regulation, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, Regulation & Governance, and Law, Innovation, & Technology. Professor Camacho is the co-author, with Robert Glicksman, of Reorganizing Government: A Functional and Dimensional Framework, published by NYU Press in 2019. He is also the co-author of Property: Cases & Materials, Fifth Edition (with James Charles Smith and Edward J. Larson) (Aspen 2022), and Environmental Protection: Law and Policy, Ninth Edition (with Robert L. Glicksman, William W. Buzbee, Daniel R. Mandelker, and Emily Hammond) (Aspen 2023).

Professor Camacho’s interdisciplinary research has involved collaborations with experts in ecology, land use planning, political science, computer science, genetics, philosophy, and sociology. He is the principal investigator on the $1.2 million Integrated and Equitable Climate Action project, which aims to align local plans with California’s climate mandates while developing best practices for effective and equitable adaptation planning. He is a principal or co-investigator on six other ongoing funded research projects. His scientific publications include articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, BioScience, the Journal of Applied Ecology, Frontiers in Climate, and Issues in Science and Technology.

He is a frequent public speaker and has contributed opinion pieces or interviews for various print and radio news outlets (including the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, The Australian, Discover, Nature Climate Change, Bloomberg, Businessweek, HuffPost, Mother Jones, The Hill, Washington Post and National Public Radio stations).

Professor Camacho is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He also serves as the inaugural Faculty Director of the UCI Law Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources, which seeks to promote policy-relevant research and public engagement through conferences, lectures, publications, stakeholder facilitation on a variety of regional and national environmental issues, and extensive interdisciplinary research. He is on the Board of Directors and a Scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit think tank devoted to issues of environmental protection and safety. He holds a courtesy appointment in Political Science at UCI’s School of Social Sciences, and is the former chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Natural Resources.

In Fall 2017, he was the Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. Before joining UCI, Professor Camacho was an Associate Professor at the Notre Dame Law School, a research fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center, and practiced environmental and land use law.

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Books and Book Chapters

Law Journal Articles and Essays

See Professor Camacho's Scholarly Articles on SSRN

See Professor Camacho's CV

  • Presenter, The Law and Ethics of Cross-Ocean Coral Transplantation, UNIV. OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL, March 6, 2025 (confirmed).
  • Discussant, The Endangered Species Act: The Next 50 Years, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, Nov. 17, 2024.
  • Panelist, Structural Choices in Institutional Governance Design, REGULATORY GOVERNANCE IN A CHANGING WORLD, UNIV. OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW SCHOOL, June 17-18, 2024 (panel dedicated to ALEJANDRO E. CAMACHO & ROBERT L. GLICKSMAN, REORGANIZING GOVERNMENT).
  • Presenter, Governing Ecological Risk from Emerging Biotechnologies, Pathways towards the safe and effective deployment of engineered microbial technologies, CALTECH CENTER FOR SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND PUBLIC POLICY, Feb 27-28, 2024.
  • Panelist, President Biden’s Executive Order and Addressing Ecological Risk from Emerging Biotechnologies, What Next? The Rise, Fall, and Future of American Environmental Law, OHIO STATE UNIV. LAW SCHOOL, Feb. 23, 2024.
  • Speaker, Chancellor’s Chair Investiture, UNIV. OF CALIF., IRVINE, April 17, 2023.
  • Speaker, Advancing Ecological Conservation on Tribal Lands under Climate Change, BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE, LEWIS & CLARK LAW SCHOOL, April 7, 2023.
  • Panelist, Assisted Migration in a Rapidly Changing World, PUBLIC INTEREST ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CONFERENCE, UNIV. OF OREGON, March 4, 2023.
  • Speaker, Reconsidering Conservation Governance in the Anthropocene, STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, Oct. 12, 2022.
  • Speaker, Reconsidering Conservation Governance in the Anthropocene, UNIV. OF CALIF., IRVINE, Sept. 21, 2022.
  • Presenter, Environmental Law and Ethics in the Anthropocene, Reimagining UCI in a Climate-Changed World, UNIV. OF CALIF., IRVINE, April 18, 2022.
  • Panelist, Recommendations, Implementation of the Endangered Species Act, U.S. DEPT. OF INTERIOR, April 12, 2022.
  • Presenter, The Future of Conservation? Law and Ethics in the Anthropocene, NORTHWESTERN UNIV. LAW SCHOOL, March 17, 2022.
  • Elected Fellow, American Bar Foundation, 2020-Present.
  • Nominee, 2L/3L Professor of the Year, U.C. IRVINE SCHOOL OF LAW, 2019-20.
  • Top Ranked U.S. Legal Scholars for Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact, 2019 (ranked thirty-first).
  • Elected Member, AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE, 2017-Present.
  • Top Twenty Article of the Year, FIFTEENTH ANNUAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY ANNUAL REVIEW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW INSTITUTE AND VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL (awarded for Beyond Preemption, Toward Metropolitan Governance, 39 STAN. ENVTL. L.J. 125-198 (2020) (with Nicholas J. Marantz))