Hillary Hoffmann, Visiting Professor of Law
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Hillary Hoffmann

Titles

  • Visiting Professor of Law

Degrees

  • Women's Leadership Program Certificate, Yale School of Management
  • JD, University of Utah
  • BA, Middlebury College

Contact

Phone: 802-831-1329

Biography

Hillary Hoffmann’s areas of expertise include Indigenous Law and Policy, Natural Resources and Public Lands Law, and Environmental Law. Her scholarship focuses on Tribal sovereignty and environmental governance, including Tribal co-management of Tribal and public lands, waters, and resources, and natural resources and public lands law reforms. Her recent book, “American Grasslands: Reckoning with the Law and Policy that Shaped Agriculture in the West,” explores the structure of laws that consolidated power over former Tribal lands and waters and marginalized farmers and ranchers of color in the American west. She has published numerous law review articles on various topics of note in the fields of natural resources and Indigenous Law and Policy, including in the Yale Journal on Regulation, the Oregon Law Review, and the U.C. Hastings Journal of Environmental Law.

From 2022-2025, Hillary led the Tribal initiative supporting the Bears Ears Commission during the first Tribal-federal collaborative management planning process for a 1.36 million acre area of federal public lands—the Bears Ears National Monument. Working on behalf of the elected and appointed leaders of five Tribal Nations—The Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Zuni Tribe—Hillary’s team worked with federal agency partners at the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to integrated over 300 Tribal recommendations in the final Resource Management Plan for Bears Ears National Monument.

Prior to her work with the Coalition, Hillary taught Natural Resources Law and Indigenous Law and Policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School and Boston College Law School. In 2020, she served as the inaugural Robert H. McKinney Visiting Chair of Environmental Law at I.U. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was elected to the American Law Institute in 2020 and is licensed to practice law in Utah and Vermont.

Curriculum Vitae

Expertise

  • Environmental Law
  • Indigenous Law and Policy
  • Natural Resources Law and Management
  • Public Lands

Departments

  • Environmental Advocacy Clinic
  • Faculty

Courses Taught

  • Civil Procedure
  • Environmental Advocacy Clinic
  • Evidence
  • Native Americans and the Law