Matt Festa teaches and researches in the areas of property law and land use, state & local government, energy & environmental law, trusts & estates, legal history, and national security law. His scholarship focuses on the relation between property rights and public control in land use planning and government regulation; on the role of property rights in constitutional law and history; and on property and the rule of law in contemporary international affairs.
Professor Festa joined the South Texas College of Law Houston faculty in 2007, after serving as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law. Prior to teaching, he practiced in litigation, land use, environmental, and energy law at Locke Lord LLP. He served as a law clerk to federal judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prof. Festa attended Vanderbilt University, where he was the Executive Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and earned a masters’ degree in history. Prior to law school he served in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and earned a masters’ degree in public administration. He earned his undergraduate degree in history and English at the University of Notre Dame.
Professor Festa currently serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of International & Operational Law at the ABA-accredited Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, and is also an Instructor with the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies. He is the editor of the Land Use Prof Blog, and lives in the “Unzoned City” of Houston with his spouse, who teaches at Rice University, and their two children.
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7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 2-A
22nd Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
The Omni Shoreham Hotel2500 Calvert St NW
Washington, DC 20008
7 Minute Presentations of Works in Progress Panel 1-B
21st Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference
Hilton New Orleans - Steering, Riverside Complex2 Poydras St
New Orleans, LA 70130
United States Supreme Court Term in Review
Becks Prime 1001 E. Memorial Loop (Memorial Park)The Open Beaches Act
South Texas Student Chapter
South Texas College of Law1303 San Jacinto St
Houston, TX 77002