John Thorson

John E. Thorson is an attorney residing in western Montana after recently retiring as Assistant Chief Administrative Law Judge for the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco. He has 25 years of experience in water law and policy, as well as in the use of alternative dispute resolution methods in a variety of natural resource and environmental conflicts. From 2007-08, he was co-chair of a large multi-party facilitation (involving states, tribes, federal agencies, and other stakeholders) that resulted in the first major agreement in the Missouri River Basin after 15 years of contentious litigation. Over his career, he has completed policy or legal work in almost every western river basin.

Thorson is the former Special Master for the Arizona General Stream Adjudication and the former Director of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. He is the co-founder and a continuing co-convenor of Dividing the Waters, an educational program for state and federal judges involved in complex water litigation. He served as chair of the American Bar Association’s Water Resources Committee. He is the author or co-author of four books and over 50 articles. Thorson has served as adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California, University of San Francisco School of Law, University of Arizona College of Law, and the University of Montana School of Law. He is a member of the state bars of Montana, Arizona (inactive), California (inactive), and New Mexico (inactive). He holds a DPA from USC, a JD from the University of California (Berkeley), and a BA from the University of New Mexico.