LLS | Faculty | Daniel P. Selmi

Daniel P. Selmi
Professor of Law and Fritz B. Burns Chair of Real Property

Educational and Professional Background

While in law school, Daniel Selmi was comments editor of the Santa Clara Law Review. After graduation, he served as law clerk to the Honorable Manuel L. Real, United States District Judge for the Central District of California. Professor Selmi was appointed a deputy attorney general for the State of California, serving from 1976-83 in the Environmental Law and Natural Resources Law Sections. A lecturer at the University of California Irvine in 1979-80 and an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School from 1981-83, he joined Loyola's full-time faculty in 1983 and served as associate dean for academic affairs from 1990-93. He has also served as reporter to the Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Committee for the Central District of California, and during the 1993-94 academic year he was a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington D.C.

Professor Selmi is co-editor of the six volume treatise, California Environmental Law and Land Use Practice, and co-author of the casebook Land Use Regulation: Cases and Materials. Over his career he has briefed over 35 appellate cases involving environmental and land use law, and he argued over 20 of those in the appellate courts, including three in the California Supreme Court. In 2008, he was elected to the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers. The Academy, the oldest lawyers' organization in the country dedicated solely to the practice of appellate law, admits members only be election "after rigorous scrutiny of their skill in appellate practice."

Professor Selmi, a former chair of the State Bar Committee (now Section on Environmental Law), has been a panelist on numerous occasions at the Section's Annual Conference at Yosemite. He has also been a panelist at both the Annual California Land Use Law and Planning Conference and the Los Angeles County Bar Section on Environmental Law's Annual “Super-Symposium.” Most recently, he was a panelist at the First and Second Annual “Little NEPA” Conferences, sponsored by the American Bar Association's Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources. He has been a regular lecturer at the “Western Environmental Boot Camp,” sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, which educates new practitioners in the field of environmental law.

Professional Memberships and Activities

Member (and former Chair), California State Bar Section on Environmental

Member, Los Angeles County Bar Section on Environmental Law

Former Chair, Editorial Board, Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine (magazine of the Los Angeles County Bar Association)

Member, Editorial Board, California Environmental Law Reporter (Matthew Bender)

Regular Contributor, Rivista Guiridica Dell-Ambiente , Italian journal on Environmental law

Recent Scholarship

2007 Annual Update to State Environmental Law (West) (two-volume treatise updated annually)

Article, “Themes in the Evolution of the State Environmental Policy Acts,” 38 Urban Lawyer 947 (2006)

Article, “The Promise and Limits of Negotiated Rulemaking: Evaluating the Negotiation of a Regional Air Quality Rule,” 35 Environmental Law 415 (2005).

Casebook, Land Use Regulation: Cases and Materials (2d ed. 2004) (with J. Kushner) (Aspen Law and Business) (with new Teacher's Manual)

Chapter, “Moratoria and Takings Theory,” in T. Roberts (ed.), Takings Sides on Takings (American Bar Association Section on Local Government Law, 2002) (and 2003 supplement to chapter )

Article, “Reconsidering the Use of Direct Democracy in Making Land Use Decisions,” 19 UCLA Journal of Environmental Law 293 (2001-02)

Courses Taught

Environmental Law, Land Use Regulation, Torts, Introduction to Appellate Advocacy, Administrative Law, Natural Resources Law Seminar