Background

Ann Eisenberg joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2016 after spending two years as the Land Use and Sustainable Development Law Fellow at West Virginia University College of Law.  Her research focuses on sustainability, with a particular emphasis on local government, property, natural resources, energy, and community economic development. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in numerous law journals and book chapters, including the Southern California Law Review, the Harvard Law and Policy Review, the Boston College Law Review, and the Washington University Law Review. Eisenberg’s work exploring the intersection of rural community economic development, sustainability, and theories of justice is featured in her TEDx talk, in numerous interviews and op-eds, and in her forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press. In 2022, she spent seven months in residence as a Digital Studies Fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress researching the legal history of utilities regulation. 

Eisenberg’s career focused on community development began with her service in the Peace Corps in Morocco from 2006 to 2008 and has been informed by her work as a practitioner as well as a scholar.  Since her Peace Corps service, she has conducted work in Morocco, India, West Virginia, and South Carolina on issues related to community development and sustainability.  She created South Carolina’s transactional Environmental Law Clinic, through which law students tackle complex projects focused on natural resource conservation, environmental justice, and community development.  Her other courses include Property, Water Law, Law and the Urban/Rural Divide, and Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiation.  Prior to entering academia, Eisenberg worked as a staff attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri.  She received her J.D., cum laude, from Cornell Law School, and is a member of the bars of New York and South Carolina.

Teaching

• Environmental Law Clinic (LAWS 742)
• Property (LAWS 509)
• Interviewing, Counseling & Negotiation (LAWS 771)
• Law and the Urban/Rural Divide (LAWS 783)
• Water Law (LAWS 747)

Scholarship

• Power and Powerlessness in Local Government: A Response to Professor Swan, 135 Harv. L. Rev. F. 173 (2022) (invited)
• Economic Regulation and Rural America, 98 Wash. U. L. Rev. 737 (2021)
• Distributive Justice and Rural America, 61 B.C. L. Rev. 189 (2020)
• Just Transitions, 92 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2 (2019)
• Rural Blight, 13 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 187 (2018) (invited contribution)