
Moira O'Neill
Moira O’Neill teaches land use law, state and local government law, and housing policy courses. O’Neill also serves as an associate director of the University of Virginia’s Environmental Institute. O’Neill's research and writing relies on empirical methods to explore how state and local governments address climate change while also tackling spatial inequality. Her work has supported legislative reform and agency rulemaking in the areas of land use and housing law. In California, O’Neill’s research supported the 2018 Housing Accountability Act amendments, the development and implementation of California’s 10-year housing data strategy (codified in section 65940.1 to the California Government Code), the California Air Resources Board’s 2022 Scoping Plan for Achieving Carbon Neutrality (that implements the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act), and the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s first-ever Housing Policy and Practice Review of San Francisco. Major media outlets, including The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, KQED (San Francisco), KCRW (Los Angeles), and The Wall Street Journal have also reported on O’Neill’s research or sought her opinion on land use law topics and environmental review.
Before joining UVA, O’Neill was an associate research scholar in the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. She previously taught land use law and state and local government law courses at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning and at Berkeley Law. O’Neill is also an associate research scientist in the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley and an affiliated scholar of UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
O’Neill’s prior professional and legal experience involved representing public entities in California for over a decade. In her legal practice, she represented public entities in appellate matters, writ proceedings and complex litigation. Her professional consulting included public policy analysis and the design of participatory processes around public works projects.
O’Neill received her J.D., Order of the Coif, from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco in 2006. She graduated law school with academic honors and awards, including recognition through membership in the Thurston Society. She also served as the executive managing editor for the Hastings Law Journal and worked as a teaching assistant in the Legal Educational Opportunity Program for first-year civil procedure, property and environmental law courses. After graduating law school, O’Neill clerked for Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. O’Neill is a member of the state bar of California and admitted to the Ninth Circuit, Northern, Southern, Eastern and Central Districts of California.
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