About Albert C.
Albert C. Lin combined a scientific undergraduate degree and two advanced public-policy and legal degrees before he entered the federal courts. He earned a B.S. in Biology from Emory University in 1992. He then completed a Master in Public Policy at Harvard University in 1995 and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1996. Those credentials shaped a career that moves between litigation, public service and legal education.
His early professional steps were in the federal judiciary. In 1996 he clerked for Judge James R. Browning on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The next year he served in chambers for Judge Merrick B. Garland on the D.C. Circuit. Those clerkships provided intensive exposure to appellate practice and complex federal questions.
After the clerks' rooms, he joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998 as a trial lawyer in the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There he handled civil litigation concerning environmental statutes and federal land-management disputes. The work required drafting motions, taking depositions and arguing in district court. It also kept him in close contact with technical experts, an area where his undergraduate science training proved useful.
In 2003 he shifted his professional focus toward teaching and scholarship when he became the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. In the classroom he has taught courses on administrative law, environmental law and related subjects that intersect law and policy. His academic work has tracked developments in regulatory law and the role of courts in reviewing agency decisions.
Lin holds bar memberships in California and the District of Columbia. He has maintained active membership in the D.C. Bar since 1998 and in the other jurisdiction since 1996. That combination of courtroom and academic experience informs both his writing and his classroom approach. He brings practical litigation experience into seminars and clinics, and he brings doctrinal analysis into case preparation.
Colleagues describe his style in the classroom as methodical and exacting. Students note his interest in technical detail, especially where science and law intersect. Outside teaching, his background in federal litigation gives him familiarity with appellate procedure and environmental enforcement matters.
He continues to serve on the faculty at UC Davis School of Law, where his current practice and scholarship focus on administrative and environmental law issues.
