Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr.
Professor Thompson has contributed a large body of scholarship on environmental issues, from the future of endangered species and fisheries to the use of economic techniques for environmental regulation. He is founding director of Stanford Law School's Environmental and Natural Resources Program and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed him Special Master in Montana v. Wyoming, a case that could affect water rights throughout the Yellowstone River system.
Professor Thompson is chairman of the board of the Resources Legacy Fund, a California trustee for The Nature Conservancy and serves on the boards of the American Farmland Trust, the Natural Heritage Institute and the Science Advisory Board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1986, he was a partner at O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles and taught at UCLA School of Law. He was a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.