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David Spence

Professor

Department:     Business, Government & Society

Additional Titles:     School of Law Co-Director, Energy Management and Innovation Center

David Spence Headshot
David Spence Headshot

David Spence is Professor of Law, Politics & Regulation at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business and School of Law, where he teaches courses on energy regulation and business-government relations. He is also the Co-Director of the Energy Management & Innovation Center at the McCombs School of Business. Professor Spence is co-author of the Foundation Press textbook, Energy, Economics and the Environment (4th Ed., 2015), and he has published numerous scholarly articles on subjects relating to energy policy, regulation and the regulatory process in journals such as the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Journal of Legal Studies, Public Administration Review, and the California Law Review, among others.

Before coming to academia, Professor Spence was a practicing attorney representing public utilities, energy companies and others in connection with a wide variety of environmental and energy regulatory matters. He has considerable experience with executive education training in the field of corporate social responsibility, as well as stakeholder relations for a wide variety of energy and other companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, the BG Group, Chicago Bridge and Iron, and Sinopec, among others.

In addition to his work at the University of Texas, Professor Spence has taught at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, the Vanderbilt University Law School, the Cornell Law School, the University of California at Santa Barbara's Bren School of the Environment, and the Harvard Law School.

PhD, Duke University

JD, University of North Carolina

BA, Gettysburg College