Monika U. Ehrman

Monika U. Ehrman is Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law. She was also appointed Professor of Engineering (by courtesy) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at SMU's Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

Prior to joining SMU, Professor Ehrman taught at the University of North Texas at Dallas and at the University of Oklahoma, where she led the energy and natural resources program and served as the Faculty Director of the Oil & Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Center at the College of Law. While at the University of Oklahoma, she also held a courtesy appointment at the Michael F. Price College of Business, where she taught in the Executive MBA and Energy Management programs.

Prior to teaching, she served as general counsel of a privately held energy company; senior counsel with Pioneer Natural Resources; and associate attorney at Locke Lord LLP. Before law school, Professor Ehrman worked as a petroleum engineer in the upstream, midstream, and pipeline sectors of the energy industry. In addition to her experience with the technical aspects of the industry, she also worked as an analyst in the areas of commodity risk management and energy trading. She is currently secretary of the AALS Section on Natural Resources & Energy, and she is on the editorial board of the Journal of World Energy Law & Business (published by Oxford University Press). She has previously served as Treasurer and was on the Executive Committee of the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law (2021–2022) and was Vice President Education for the Association of International Energy Negotiators (2019–2021).

Professor Ehrman earned a B.Sc. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Alberta; J.D. from SMU Law; and LL.M. from Yale Law School. During law school, she was a research assistant for the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy; a fellow in the Kauffman Program in Law, Economics and Entrepreneurship; and an editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. Her teaching courses have included Property, Natural Resources Law, Energy Law, Water Law, Real Estate Transactions, Oil & Gas Law, Oil & Gas Environmental Law, Remedies, Negotiations, and Transactional Energy Contracts.

Her scholarly interests are in the areas of natural resources, energy, property, and environmental law & policy. She is principal investigator of a multi-year team grant awarded in 2021 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the impact of the clean energy transition on Native American communities. She is also researching the mischaracterization of natural resources in property law, currently writing on atmospheric modification, mining & wildfire policy. She has been published in law reviews, interdisciplinary journals, books, and is a co-author of Cases and Materials on Oil and Gas Law (West Academic 8th ed.), with John Lowe, Owen Anderson, Christopher Kulander, Burke Griggs, and James Coleman.