Biography
Courses
Michael Roberts
Adjunct Faculty
B.S. University of Utah, 1986
J.D. University of Utah, 1989
LL.M. University of Arkansas, 2000
roberts@law.ucla.edu |
Michael T. Roberts teaches Consumer Food Law and Policy. He has a unique background in food law and policy that blends together academic and private practice. He is well versed in a broad range of legal and policy issues from farm to fork in local, national, and global food supply systems. He is a prolific author, having contributed to books and having written several articles on food regulation, trade, and policy issues. He is currently writing a treatise provisionally titled, The Oxford Commentaries on American Law: Food Law, to be published by Oxford University Press, Inc. He has guest lectured on food-law subjects at various law schools in the U.S., Europe, and Asia and speaks frequently at national and international conferences.
Mr. Roberts also is Director of the Center for Food Law and Policy (CFLP), a newly formed non-profit organization that advances thoughtful policymaking through innovative legal scholarship on food law and policy. The focus of CFLP is currently on the role of food law and policy in dealing with the obesity epidemic.
Mr. Roberts also currently serves as Special Counsel to the Roll Law Group LLP, a law firm that exclusively represents Roll Global Corporation, a private holding company headquartered in Los Angeles, and its farming and food companies who are global leaders in their respective product lines, employing more than 5,000 people world-wide. Mr. Roberts joined Roll in August 2008, where he is responsible for global food regulation, trade, and public policy. He has offices in Los Angeles and Washington D.C.
Mr. Roberts serves on the advisory boards for the World Food Law Institute and the National Agricultural Law Center, is a member of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, and is a Deputy Director of the FDA Research Center at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China. He is the former first chair of the Lex Mundi (world’s largest association of private law firms) international Agribusiness practice group. He was formerly a Research Law Professor and Director of the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas School of Law. In private practice he was of counsel in Washington D.C. with Venable LLP, as a member of the firm’s food and agricultural law practice group. Immediately prior to joining the Roll Law Group, Mr. Roberts was a visiting legal scholar with and consultant to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome.