King Hall Remembers Professor Hap Dunning
From UC Davis Law's 2025 Counselor alumni magazine:
Professor Emeritus Harrison C. “Hap” Dunning, an environmental law forerunner who played an integral role in California water law and policy, died in March at age 86.
Born in Philadelphia, Dunning graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, where he was active in the civil rights movement.
According to his obituary in the Davis Enterprise, Dunning participated in the 1963 March on Washington and witnessed Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. Six years later, Dunning joined UC Davis’ then-fledgling law school, which had just named its new building after Dr. King.
An architect of UC Davis Law’s outstanding environmental law program, Dunning focused his path-breaking scholarship on water law. In 1980, he organized the nation’s first conference on the public trust doctrine – a UC Davis Law Review symposium that drew 650 people.
The law review’s resulting symposium issue would prove highly influential in the California Supreme Court’s 1983 National Audubon Society v. Superior Court decision, which declared the public trust doctrine an essential component of California’s water rights legal system. The ruling preserved eastern California’s Mono Lake, which had been imperiled by water diversion to Los Angeles.
“That was a fantastic breakthrough,” Dunning told the King Hall Counselor magazine in 2011. “That’s what gives me the most satisfaction: Rather than be cited by somebody, I’d rather be able to see water in the creeks of the Mono Basin, or in the formerly dry areas of the San Joaquin River.”
In 2014, the Mono Lake Committee honored Dunning with its Defender of the Trust award.
Dunning’s extensive public service included stints on the Governor’s Commission to Review California Water Rights Law, California Water Commission, and the Bay-Delta Advisory Council. He spent decades on the boards of water-related nonprofits and as a mentor to King Hall students and young environmental lawyers in Davis and beyond.
“His teaching was most impactful for me, and incentivized me to pursue a career in environmental, natural resource and water law,” said longtime UC Davis Law Professor Richard Frank ’74, who took Dunning’s Environmental Law class in 1972. “We stayed in touch over the subsequent 53 years, and Hap's friendship and mentoring over the years were priceless to me.”
Frank said Dunning inspired his own successful career with the state Department of Justice and subsequent pivot to teaching, first at UC Berkeley then Davis, where Frank founded the California Environmental Law & Policy Center.
Dedicated to King Hall students’ growth, Dunning started a popular environmental law moot court program and helped connect students with internships through his state agency contacts. In 1996, he received the law school’s ’s William and Sally Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award.
UC Davis Law alumnus Phil Satre '75 and his wife, Jennifer recently made a $50,000 leadership gift to establish the Harrison “Hap” Dunning Endowment Fund. The fund will support King Hall's environmental law program and is open to all donors.