Professor Ziegler is a founder and past president of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute. He is inaugural holder of the Robert B. Yegge Memorial Research Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of law. He is a frequent speaker and noted scholar on zoning and urban planning law. Professor Ziegler has published in professional journals throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. His writings, which include the teaching casebook Land Use Regulation, published by Aspen Co., and the five-volume treatise Rathkopf’s The Law of Zoning and Planning, by Thomson-West, are widely cited in land use cases by state appellate courts as well as by the United States Supreme Court. Professor Ziegler’s consulting, research projects, and lectures on land use planning have included projects for the City of Paris, the European Network for Housing Research based in Sweden, the Austrian Science Fund, the Federal Institute for Spatial and Landscape Planning in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Shanghai Institute of Urban Planning and Design. He is a European Union Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar in the field of urban planning and sustainable development law and recently gave a series of lectures as a visiting scholar at the University of Trento, the University of Regensburg, the University of Barcelona, the Pantheon- Sorbonne University of Paris I, and the European Institute for Federal and Regional Studies in Bolzano, Italy. His article “Megapolitan Growth Management for Sustainable Development in the 21st Century” published in the International Journal of Law in the Built Environment recently received a 2010 Emerald Literati Award for Excellence in Scholarship by Emerald Group Publishing Limited in the United Kingdom..

In the United States, his work has ranged from projects for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the Port of Dutch Harbor on the Bering Sea and Anchorage, Alaska, to research on New York City’s special zoning districts and Florida’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, which manages development of Disney World. He has been involved in research projects or symposia for the Center for the Study of American and Comparative Law, the Southwest Legal Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, The Conservation Foundation, the American Bar Association, the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, the National Association of Homebuilders, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has also served as a consultant to the United States’ Senate Judiciary and Senate Public Works and the Environment Committees on matters related to land use and private property rights.

Professor Ziegler is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, holds a J.D. degree from the University of Kentucky Law School, and received the advanced LL.M. degree in public law with highest honors from the National Law Center of George Washington University.

Ziegler – Rathkopf Zoning and Planning Treatise

Ziegler – Land Use Regulation Casebook

Ziegler – RMLUI PowerPoint Presentation

Featured Publications

• Property Rights, Housing and the American Constitution: The Social Benefits of Property Rights Protection, Government Interventions and the European Court on Human Rights’ Hutten-Czapska Decision, co-authored with Professor Jan Laitos, Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, Vol. 21, No. 25 (2011)
• Sustainable Urban Development and the Next American Landscape: Some Thoughts on Transportation, Regionalism, and Urban Planning Law Reform in the 21st Century, 43 The Urban Lawyer 91 (2011)
• Rathkopf’s the Law of Zoning and Planning, Principal Author for Revision, Planning, 5 Vols. (Thomson-West) (4th ed., 1983- 2010)
• Semi-Annual Cumulative Supplements, Rathkopf’s the Law of Zoning and Planning, 5 Vols. (Thomson West) (4th ed., 1983-2010)
• The Case for Megapolitan Growth Management in the Twenty- First Century: Regional Urban Planning and Sustainable Development in the United States, 1 INTERNATIONAL J. OF LAW IN THE BUILT ENVT. 105 (2009)