Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy,
Professor from Practice
- B.S. University of Utah, 1986
- J.D. University of Utah, 1989
- LL.M. University of Arkansas, 2000
Michael T. Roberts is the founding Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. A recognized thought leader in the field, Roberts has played a pivotal role in influencing the development of food law and policy in the United States and internationally. In 2004, he taught the first food law and policy course in the United States and spearheaded the creation of the Journal of Food Law and Policy—the first academic journal dedicated exclusively to the subject.
Since joining UCLA in 2013, Roberts has authored and edited foundational books, including Food Law in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2016), the first comprehensive treatise on U.S. food law. He is also the co-editor of Food Law: Cases and Materials (Wolters Kluwer, 2019) and serves as editor and contributing author of Research Handbook on International Food Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024). His scholarship also includes numerous chapters, articles, and papers on a broad range of food law topics.
Roberts is actively involved in the global development of food law and policy. He has lectured widely in countries such as Italy, China, Korea, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Romania, Turkey, and Russia. He serves as an outside advisor to the Journal of Food Law and Policy and actively supports and promotes food law scholarship, including through the Resnick Center’s podcast, Repast. He has led the Resnick Center in forming partnerships with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and several leading universities, including Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and Renmin University School of Law in Beijing.
Roberts’s current research explores the relationship between global food governance and law. He is pursuing a DPhil in modern history at the University of Oxford, examining the origins and evolution of the FAO’s constitutional framework—how it shaped postwar food governance and reflected competing visions of international cooperation, equity, and institutional authority. He is also advising the FAO on a historical exhibition of its Constitution, which the Director-General inaugurated during the 2024 World Food Forum.
Roberts collaborates on a broad array of international initiatives concerning food supply chain integrity, regulatory innovation, and food security. He co-authored a legal brief with the FAO Legal Department focused on strategies to combat food fraud and is developing contractual models to integrate integrity and social values into global supply chains. He consults with the Gates Foundation regarding the integrity of vitamins in Africa’s food fortification programs. Additionally, he served as the lead consultant to Latham & Watkins in designing a food regulatory system for NEOM in northwestern Saudi Arabia, emphasizing innovation and sustainability.
At UCLA, Roberts leads efforts to integrate legal education with broader social concerns related to food systems. He oversaw the launch of a student-led initiative that promotes social justice and equity in both domestic and global food systems. He teaches a seminar on Introduction to Food Law and Policy and guides students in independent research courses, which provide opportunities for researching and writing about significant food law and policy issues. He coordinates additional food law courses at UCLA Law while also contributing to the development of a graduate food studies certificate and co-teaching its core course, Introduction to Food Studies.
Roberts entered the field of food law in 2000 after taking a sabbatical from his firm to pursue an LL.M. program in agricultural law at the University of Arkansas, which is home to the only such program in the U.S. He later joined the Arkansas faculty as a Research Professor and Director of the National Agricultural Law Center. His experience also includes serving as of counsel at Venable LLP in Washington, D.C., and as a visiting scholar and consultant to the FAO in Rome.