Jessica Owley

Jessica Owley specializes in Environmental Law and Property Law, with a focus on Climate Change Law and Policy. She is a leading expert on private land conservation and conservation easements. Her interdisciplinary work explores ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as furthering other environmental goals in the context of drastic change. Her work is cited widely and has received multiple awards, including most recently the 2019 Morrison Prize for sustainability research. She annually participates as an observer at the annual treaty negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Professor Owley holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California—Berkeley where she also received a J.D. and MLA (Masters of Landscape Architecture). She practiced in the Land Use and Environmental Law group at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco after clerking on the Ninth Circuit and in the Central District of California. She is a member of the California bar.

Before joining Miami Law, Jessica Owley was a Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) where she directed the Environmental Law Program. Prior to Buffalo, she was an Assistant Professor at Pace Law School. She spent 2017 as a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Pontificia – Comillas (ICADE) in Madrid, Spain where she was an OECD fellow.

She is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Law, Property, and Society. She is one of the founding members and the current president of the Environmental Law Collaborative. She is a member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and the World Commission of Protected Areas.