Ph.: 505-277-2866
Fax: 505-277-1597
Office: 3246
Emeritus Professor of Law
A.B. 1965, Princeton University
J.D. 1969, Harvard University
Member of the New Mexico Bar
Em Hall has focused his research and writing on the history of land and water in the Southwest. He has written two books on water issues, Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant from 1800 to 1936 (1984) and High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River (2002).
Prior to joining the UNM law faculty in 1983, he spent seven years at the State Engineer's Office. During his time there, he wrote an administrative history of the Pecos River Compact from its inception in 1949 to 1974. This was the beginning of his research for "High and Dry."
When Hall first arrived in New Mexico in 1969, he wrote for and edited the New Mexico Review, a monthly investigative journal. He also practiced law in Pecos, where he lived, and served as village planner, attorney and municipal judge for the Village of Pecos. He has worked for Northern New Mexico Legal Services and the New Mexico Land Grant Demonstration Project.
Hall brings a background in water law and public land law, along with a lifetime interest in writing, to his teaching.
Course Descriptions
Required Book:TBA
The research, writing, and editing seminar is limited to second year students who have successfully written onto the Natural Resources Journal. The goals of the seminar are to consider editing and writing articles dealing with a wide spectrum of natural resource and environmental problems. The seminar emphasizes interdisciplinary writing for a broad audience of natural resource policy makers. Students will work towards selecting, researching, and writing about a natural resources topic of their own choosing. At the same time the seminar will help to train the members to critically view their own work and the work of other contributors to the Natural Resources Journal. Finally, the seminar will instruct new NRJ members in the process of producing the four issues of the Journal published each year and as NRJ staff members they will be assigned cite checking duties for articles currently being prepared for publication.
Natural Resources Journal II - Spring
The most important goals of the seminar are to teach editing of scholarly writing and, at the same time, deal with a wide spectrum of natural resources/environmental problems. It will emphasize interdisciplinary writing for an audience of natural resources policy makers. The course will help train the members to critically view their own work, learn to work in teams, appreciate the importance of deadlines and organizational techniques, learn to communicate with authors about their work, learn about publication processes and be sensitive to the concerns of journal subscribers.
Natural Resources Journal III (Editors) - Fall
Research, writing, and publication, as well as editing and processing materials for publication.
Natural Resources Journal IV - Spring
Research, writing, and publication, as well as editing and processing materials for publication.
This course is a wide-ranging historical introduction to our Common Law legal tradition. The course also provides a comparative legal perspective on the Common Law versus Civil Law systems. In addition, the course includes topics focusing on: the role of law and lawyers, legal education, non-Western concepts of law, so-called Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), and changing perceptions of law in America. Thus, the course offers comparative, historical, cultural, and jurisprudential dimensions to law. It establishes a broad context not only for other first-year courses, but for the student’s entire legal education and work as a lawyer.
Course Description
The course begins by considering how the federal government came to own large parts of western states and what that ownership means in terms of state and federal control over federal public lands. The course moves on resource by resource to consider the different legal regimes governing access to and use of various public land resources. Those resources include: water, minerals, grass, timber, "recreation" and preservation, including wilderness and wildlife.
Course Descriptions
Required Book:TBA
The research, writing, and editing seminar is limited to second year students who have successfully written onto the Natural Resources Journal. The goals of the seminar are to consider editing and writing articles dealing with a wide spectrum of natural resource and environmental problems. The seminar emphasizes interdisciplinary writing for a broad audience of natural resource policy makers. Students will work towards selecting, researching, and writing about a natural resources topic of their own choosing. At the same time the seminar will help to train the members to critically view their own work and the work of other contributors to the Natural Resources Journal. Finally, the seminar will instruct new NRJ members in the process of producing the four issues of the Journal published each year and as NRJ staff members they will be assigned cite checking duties for articles currently being prepared for publication.
Natural Resources Journal II - Spring
The most important goals of the seminar are to teach editing of scholarly writing and, at the same time, deal with a wide spectrum of natural resources/environmental problems. It will emphasize interdisciplinary writing for an audience of natural resources policy makers. The course will help train the members to critically view their own work, learn to work in teams, appreciate the importance of deadlines and organizational techniques, learn to communicate with authors about their work, learn about publication processes and be sensitive to the concerns of journal subscribers.
Natural Resources Journal III (Editors) - Fall
Research, writing, and publication, as well as editing and processing materials for publication.
Natural Resources Journal IV - Spring
Research, writing, and publication, as well as editing and processing materials for publication.
Course Description
See Professor Hall for course description.
This first year course is an introduction to the basic concepts of property law, focusing on the role of possession in allocating the various rights and responsibilities connected with personal and real property. The course covers acquisition of initial property rights, adverse possession, donative transfers, the evolution and nomenclature of interests in estates in land and future interest, concurrent property rights, and takings.
Course Description
Water Law is a course that explores the law relating to the acquisition, transfer, sale, abandonment, and forfeiture of water rights. Federal and constitutional water-related issues are examined as well as overall economics and environmental policy questions that are implicated.
In addition, the course explores the transferability, quantity, and priority dates of federal Indian water rights and Pueblo water rights.
High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River (Univ. N.M. Press 2002).
Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant from 1800 to 1936 (Univ. N.M. Press 1984).
Analysis of Potential Water Conservation Incentives for New Mexico (N.M. State Eng'r Office, Santa Fe, N.M. 1996) (co-authored with Bill Fleming).
Landholding: The Spanish Borderlands, in Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies 669 (Bain ed., Charles Scribner Son's 1993).
Community Land Grants and the Forest Service as Watershed Managers: The Example of Santo Domingo de Cundiyo, in Making Sustainability Operational, GTR-RM 240 (Forest Service, Fort Collins, Colo. 1993).
Pueblo Labyrinth, in Land, Water and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants 65 (Briggs & VanNess eds., Univ. N.M. Press 1987).
Historical and Physical International Boundaries in Borderlands Water Conflicts: A Commentary, 40 Nat. Resources J. 865 (2000).
Tularosa and the Dismantling of New Mexico's Community Ditches, 75 N.M. Hist. Rev. 1 (2000).
Steve Reynolds: Portrait of the State Engineer as a Young Artist, 38 Nat. Resources J. 537 (1998).
Peonage for a Postage Stamp, Bar J. (State Bar of N.M.), July-Aug. 1998, at 20. (co-authored with Robert Nordhaus).
A Brief History of New Mexico Water Rights Administration since 1907, CLE Int'l (Denver, Colo.), Aug. 1997, at 1.
The Mismeasure of the Pecos River: Royce Tipton and the Pecos River Compact of 1948, 9 W. Legal Hist. 55 (1996).
Fundamental Principles of New Mexico Water Law, CLE Int'l (Denver, Colo.), Aug. 1996, at 1.
An Interview with New Mexico's New State Engineer: Eluid Martinez, 6 N.M. Nat. Resources Rep. 28 (1991).
San Miguel del Bado and the Common Lands of New Mexico Land Grants, 66 N.M. Hist. Rev. 4 (1991).
Shell Games: The Continuing Legacy of Rights to Mineral and Water on Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in the Southwest, 36 Rocky Mtn. Min. L. Inst. 1 (1990).
Land Litigation and the Idea of New Mexico Progress, 27 J.W. 48 (1988), reprinted in Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law (Ebright ed., Sunflower Univ. Press 1989).
Tierra y Agua: Statehood Fails to Resolve Claims Over Land, Water Rights, N.M. Mag., Sept. 1987, at 57.
Mexican Liberals and Pueblo Indians, 1821-1829, 59 N.M. Hist. Rev. 1 (1984) (co-authored with David J. Weber).
Water: New Mexico's Delicate Balance, N.M. Mag., May 1983, at 15.
Juan Estevan Pino, Se Los Coma: New Mexico Land Speculation in the 1820s, 57 N.M. Hist. Rev. 27 (1982).
Giant Before the Surveyor General: The Land Career of Donaciano Vigil, 19 J.W. 64 (1980), reprinted in Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law (Ebright ed., Sunflower Univ. Press 1980).
Book Review, 9 Colonial Latin Am. Hist. Rev. 302 (2000) (reviewing Uribe-Uram, Honorable Lives: Lawyers, Family and Politics in Colombia, 1780-1850).
Book Review, 71 N.M. Hist. Rev. 279 (1996) (reviewing Charles Cutter, The Legal Culture of New Spain).
Book Review, 69 N.M. Hist. Rev. 426 (1994) (reviewing Miller, Flooding the Courtrooms: Law and Water in the Far West).
Book Review, 64 N.M. Hist. Rev. 470 (1989) (reviewing Langhum, Law and Community on the Mexican California Frontier).
Book Review, 28 Nat. Resources J. 637 (1988) (reviewing Leshy, The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion).
Book Review, Hispanic Am. Hist. Rev. (1985) (reviewing Michael Meyer, Water in the Hispanic Southwest), reprinted in 25 Nat. Resources J. 551 (1985).
Book Review, BN.M. Mag., Jan. 1984 (reviewing Fred Powledge, Water).
Book Review, 22 Nat. Resources J. 718 (1982) (reviewing Loren L. Mall, Public Land and Mining Law).
The Trouble with Pueblo History, Hispanic Am. Hist. Rev., Feb. 1981 (reviewing Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown).
Bringing Water Law to the GAllinas River (Feb. 1986), cited in City of Las Vegas v. Oman, 110 N.M. 425, 428-29, 796 P.2d 1121, 1124-25 (1990).
Administering the Pecos River Compact Between 1948 and 1976 (Nov. 1978), cited in Texas v. New Mexico, 421 U.S. 927 (1975), 482 U.S. 124 (1986).
Taos: Adjudicacion de Derechos de Agua (G. Emlen Hall trans., Agosto 1986).
UNM School of Law
1117 Stanford NE MSC11 6070, 1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
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