Stephanie M. Stern

Stephanie M. Stern is the Desmond and Jean Ruley Kearns Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where she teaches water law, environmental law, property, and climate change law.

Professor Stern is a leading scholar at the intersection of water law, climate adaptation, and property. Her current research focuses on legal frameworks for managed retreat — the relocation of people, agricultural operations, and water rights in response to intensifying climate risks — as well as volumetric approaches to reforming western water rights. Her recent work has addressed federal buyout programs for flood-vulnerable homes, algorithmic zoning for climate risk, and the role of adaptation in reducing carbon emissions.

Her scholarship has been published in the Duke Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review, among other leading law reviews. She is the author of The Psychology of Property Law (NYU Press, 2020) and co-editor of Institutions & Climate Action: How Institutions Matter for Effective Climate Policy (forthcoming spring 2026).

Before joining academia, Professor Stern practiced property law and environmental law at Kirkland & Ellis, served as a Research Fellow at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and clerked for the Honorable Kermit Lipez on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as the Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Recent Publications

• Institutions and Climate Action: How Institutions Matter for Climate Policy (edited with C. Metcalf) (forthcoming spring 2026)
• Rise of the Machines: Algorithmic Zoning for Climate Risk, 85 Md. L. Rev. 101 (2026) (with C. Metcalf) (lead article)
• Adaption as Mitigation, 38 Geo. Env. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026) (with M. Vandenbergh, D. Dana, and J. Gilligan)
• Managed Retreat of Agricultural Water, 28 J. Water L. 139 (Sept. 2025) (with A. Dan Tarlock)
• Moving Water: Managed Retreat of Western Agricultural Water Rights for Instream Flows, 49 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 249 (2024) (with D. Tarlock),
• Complete list of publications

Education

• Yale Law School - J.D.
  Olin Fellow, Case Notes Editor of Yale Law Journal
• Brown University - B.A Psychology with Honors
  Phi Beta Kappa, Muriel Fain Sher Prize in Psychology, Baker Fellowship