For renowned environmental law scholar, Knight Professorship enables innovation
Philip H. Knight Professor of Law Mary Christina Wood transforms legal practice through groundbreaking research and scholarship. This innovative work is possible, says Wood, because of her donor-supported faculty position.
Wood created the legal foundation for Juliana v. US, a landmark climate change lawsuit brought by 21 youth, through the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, against the federal government in 2015.
“I don’t bring lawsuits,” Wood says. “I research the law and develop legal frameworks that serve as a foundation for litigation. As Our Children’s Trust continues fighting for the youths’ day in court, their efforts are inspiring similar cases throughout the US and around the world. Some are coming out with decisive victories.
“The Knight Professorship is an honor that inspires me. It provides support for visionary work that’s not just at the cutting edge, but cuts the edges of legal discourse. It’s a solemn obligation that drives me every day—in the best of ways. It pulls me to the outer reaches of possibility.
“What I’m trying to do is build a legacy linked to this professorship. It’s not just supporting me, but a broader vision that involves collaborating with others and a long-term accumulation of ideas.”
Wood is the founding director of Oregon Law’s renowned Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. She’s published extensively on climate crisis, natural resources, and native law issues. Wood is coauthor of a leading textbook on natural resources law and a textbook on public trust law. Her landmark book, Nature's Trust, was published in 2013.
Wood also works constantly to expand the impact of her work beyond academic and professional circles. She gives speeches, participates in interviews with journalists, and serves as an expert spokesperson.
For Wood, this public outreach is not extra. It’s a vital aspect of her work—a responsibility that comes with her Knight Professorship.
“I never do any research without a strategic plan for outreach,” Wood says. “That’s a big part of this professorship. When I first received it, I was so honored I took a bit of time to devise some parameters and ask myself ‘What changes in my work?’
“As a professor, I was expected to do scholarship. But a Knight Professorship required its own parameters. It inspired me—and it pushes me.”
A fourth-generation Oregonian and lawyer, Wood grew up along the Columbia River on land that her great-grandfather purchased from a homesteader. As a child, she played in the surrounding fields, forests, and wetlands and watched the salmon return every year to spawn.
During her teen years, the Interstate 205 bridge was constructed across the river near her childhood home. In less than a decade, recalls Wood, development eviscerated the landscape her family had known for four generations—and the waters Indigenous people had sustainably fished for thousands of years.
These experiences formed the roots of a lifetime committed to environmental law.
“I saw nature destroyed all around me,” Wood says. “It was heartbreaking to witness the places I loved most transformed before my eyes. Even in high school, I was involved in fighting natural destruction—fighting for fish, writing letters to the government.”
After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1987, Wood served as a judicial clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Then she practiced in the environment and natural resources department of the law firm Perkins Coie. In 1991, Wood served as assistant special counsel to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for the Endangered Species Act “God Squad” during historic legal proceedings involving the Northern Spotted Owl.
She joined the UO faculty 1992 and in 1994 received the University's Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2002, she received the Orlando Hollis Faculty Teaching Award. Wood was honored as a Knight Professor in 2006.
Building on decades of research and scholarship on the public trust doctrine—a legal principle with roots dating back to ancient Roman law—Wood continues to break trail on climate change litigation. The public trust principle obligates elected officials, as public trustees, to safeguard crucial ecology, asserts Wood.
But as the growing ecological crises make obvious, she adds, the trustees have failed to protect the rights of present and future generations.
Expanding on this scholarship, Wood is developing new strategies to force climate recovery. While carbon emissions need to go down, she points out, we also need to scrub the atmosphere of much of the legacy carbon that’s already been released.
“Legacy carbon is driving the catastrophes we’re experiencing right now,” says Wood. “Megafires, floods, low snowpack, rising sea levels, hurricanes, drought—all those are fueled by present dangerous levels of carbon, not future carbon emissions. So we need to clean that up.”
“Imagine an overflowing bathtub. Of course, you immediately turn off the spigot once you realize what’s happening. But then you also pull out the drainplug. Northwest ecosystems offer powerful natural tools for draining carbon from our atmosphere.
“The only methods currently available are nature’s own engines of cleanup. By harnessing those, scientists believe we can draw down and sequester significant amounts of carbon. Oregon has those resource engines for carbon drawdown–foremost among them, our forests.”
In addition to holding leaders accountable, Wood says it’s essential to make those responsible pay for an atmospheric cleanup effort.
Consider an oil spill in the ocean, she adds. You can see it—and the obvious harm it causes. The government rushes to clean it up, then charges the responsible corporations to pay for those efforts. The climate crisis was created by the release of carbon into the sky. But there’s no plan for cleaning it up and no framework of liability to charge for all that work.
“We hope to create a framework that government can use as a logical way to proceed. If there ever was a time for the law school to illuminate a promising direction for the law, it is now. I can’t look my kids in the eye unless I’m doing all I can to secure their survival in the future. It’s the primordial part of being a parent: protecting children—yours, mine, and all children. I couldn’t be a parent and sit this out.”
Wood is the faculty leader of four projects in Oregon Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center
- Conservation Trust
- Global Environmental Democracy
- Native Environmental Sovereignty
- Food Resilience
Courses Taught
- Federal Indian Law
- Hazardous Waste Law
- Property Law
- Natural Resources Law
- Public Lands Law
- Public Trust Law
- Wildlife Law
Related story: Gift from Roger Worthington helps Oregon Law address urgent climate challenges
Mary Wood is affiliated with the UO’s Environment Initiative, which focuses the intellectual energy and work of faculty members, students, and community partners on working toward a just and livable future through transdisciplinary research, teaching, and experiential learning. It is one of the UO’s five Academic Initiatives that transcends disciplines, developing the next generation of leaders and problem solvers.
—Ed Dorsch, BA ’94 (English, sociology), MA ’99 (journalism)