Meeting Speaker for Dec. 12, 2011 - Jim Burling

James S. Burling is the Director of Litigation at Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, California. He has worked with Pacific Legal Foundation since 1983, litigating environmental and property rights cases from Alaska to Florida.  Mr. Burling is the Chair of the Federalist Society’s Section on Environment and Private Property. Mr. Burling is also a frequent guest lecturer at continuing legal education seminars as well as community and property rights organizations on subjects ranging from the regulation of wetlands and endangered species federal land policy, zoning, regulatory exactions, the public trust doctrine, and the “taking” of private property. In 2001, Mr. Burling successfully argued a major property rights case, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, before the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Burling received a Masters degree in geological sciences from Brown University and an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in New York. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Arizona College of Law  in Tucson in 1983.