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Hillary Hoffmann, Professor of Law at the University of Vermont, is the first Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law at IU McKinney School of Law, a visiting position for the fall 2020 semester.

Professor Hoffmann’s areas of expertise include natural resources law and public lands law. Her recent scholarship analyzes the systems governing natural resource uses on federal and tribal lands and explores the conflicts that arise from Constitutional and other systemic challenges facing indigenous nations in the United States. She has also lectured and published extensively on the topics of energy development, mining, livestock grazing, and other extractive uses of public lands and tribal lands. Her forthcoming book examines the federal and state legal structures inhibiting the protection of indigenous cultural values and resources.

Professor Hoffmann has commented extensively on current issues related to federal public lands, tribal rights, and tribal sovereignty, including the reduction of the Utah national monuments by President Trump in 2017 and the controversy related to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016-2017.

Prior to joining the faculty at Vermont Law School, Professor Hoffmann practiced in the litigation group at Fabian & Clendenin, P.C. in Salt Lake City, Utah. She represented a wide variety of clients in state and federal court and before the Department of Interior’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. 

Professor Hoffmann received her BA in Spanish literature with high honors from Middlebury College and her JD from the S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. In law school, she was a William H. Leary Scholar, the Richard L. Dewsnup Fellow in Natural Resource Law, and a member of the Utah Law Review. Professor Hoffmann is licensed in Utah and Vermont and is admitted to the Vermont Supreme Court, the Utah Supreme Court, the federal district courts for the districts of Utah and Vermont, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We are delighted to welcome Professor Hoffmann to IU McKinney as the first Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law,” said IU McKinney Dean Karen E. Bravo. “We are grateful to the McKinney family for making this new opportunity possible and know that our students, faculty and wider legal community will benefit greatly from Professor Hoffmann’s impressive legal scholarship and experience.”

The Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law was established with funding from the McKinney Family Foundation and will be awarded for the first time in 2020. The school’s namesake, Mr. McKinney, and his family consider environmental sustainability as an integral aspect to the future of Indiana and their foundation serves as an advocate in this area.

“It is heartening to see the generous gifts from the McKinney Family, to support the teaching and study of environmental law,” Professor Hoffmann said. “This is such an important area of law as we prepare for a changing climate and the new and different legal needs that will arise as a result.”