Bio
Professor Hester teaches environmental law at the University of Houston Law Center, where he co-directs the Law Center’s Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Law Center and the University of Houston’s Center for Carbon Management in Energy. His research focuses on the innovative application of environmental laws to emerging technologies and unanticipated risks, including climate engineering, deep decarbonization (particularly in energy production), nanoscale materials and microplastics, and climate liability.
In Fall 2019, Prof. Hester began teaching the first U.S. law school course on Climate Intervention Law, which focuses on emerging climate engineering technologies and its legal challenges. He also instituted a new Environmental Appellate Advocacy Institute course in Spring 2024 which targets appellate matters that raise important issues for environmental law and then equips students to prepare amicus briefs or assist in oral argument preparations.
Professor Hester was named President-Elect of the American College of Environmental Lawyers in 2023 (after serving as a Regent from 2018 to 2021). He also currently serves on the American Bar Association’s Climate Change Task Force, and he acted as one of the ABA’s delegates to the UN climate Conferences of Parties in 2021 (Glasgow), 2022 (Sharm El Sheik), and 2023 (Bonn) and Dubai (virtually). The ABA also elected him to the Council of its Section on Environment, Energy and Resources (SEER) in 2011 through 2014. He is the past chair of SEER’s Special Committee on Congressional Relations, its Climate Change and Sustainable Development Committee, and its Environmental Enforcement and Crimes Committee.
The Global Council on Science and Environment inducted Prof. Hester as a Senior Fellow in 2023, and he represented the Council at the UN’s sessions of its Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the pending draft Plastics Convention (including its negotiation session in Paris on June 2023).
Prof. Hester was elected to the American Law Institute in 2004, and named the Top Environmental Lawyer in Houston in 2011 by Best Lawyers of America. In 2014, Prof. Hester served as the interim Director of the North America Commission on Environmental Cooperation’s Submission on Environmental Matters Unit in Montreal, Canada. The Environmental Law Institute also named him as its Environmental Scholar in Residence for 2015.
Prior to joining the University of Houston Law Center, Prof. Hester practiced for 25 years and served as a partner in Bracewell LLP for sixteen years. He led that firm’s Houston environmental group.