Matthew J. Festa
Assistant Professor of Law
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood”
—Daniel Burnham
"There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served"
—Jane Jacobs
Education
BA, University of Notre Dame
MPA., Murray State University
MA, Vanderbilt University
JD, Vanderbilt University Law School
Email: mfesta@stcl.edu
Phone: 713.646.1857
Office: 757T
Areas of Expertise: property, land use, state & local government, legal history, and national security lawBiography
Matthew J. Festa teaches and researches in the areas of Property Law and Land Use. His scholarship focuses on property, land use law, estates, and legal history. His published articles have analyzed the role of history in legal interpretation. His current research explores the relation between individual rights and government control in the field of land use regulation. He is also researching the role of property rights in U.S. government operations to establish and enhance the rule of law abroad.
Professor Festa previously taught at the University of Georgia School of Law. Prior to teaching, he practiced in the Houston office of the law firm Locke Lord Bissell Liddell and served as a law clerk to judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He attended Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was the Executive Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. Prior to law school he served as an active duty officer in the Army's 101st Airborne Division and earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame. He was raised in New Jersey and New York. Professor Festa currently serves as a Reserve officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)SSRN link: http://ssrn.com/author=658532
Land Use Prof Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/land_use/Representative Articles:
- Applying a Usable Past: The use of History in Law, 38 SETON HALL LAW REVIEW 479 (2008), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1004643.
- Dueling Federalists: Supreme Court Decisions with Multiple Opinions Citing The Federalist, 1986-2007, 31 SEATTLE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW 75 (2007), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1004630.Copyright © 2009, South Texas College of Law