This week marks the launch of a brand new Property Section on Jotwell (“The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)”) – the popular internet journal where legal scholars select other legal scholars’ recently-published and important journal articles for attention, analysis, and review. Donald Kochan, Chapman University Fowler School of Law’s Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, continues to expand his service activities for the larger legal community by serving as inaugural Co-Editor (with Professor Tanya Marsh of Wake Forest University School of Law) of this new Jotwell section. The Property Section will feature regular reviews on property law scholarship authored by leading scholars serving as contributing editors from academic institutions across the United States, as well as Israel, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.  As the Jotwell Mission Statement explains, the journal is designed to fill “a telling gap in legal scholarship by creating a space where legal academics can go to identify, celebrate, and discuss the best new scholarship relevant to the law.”

In addition to editing the Jotwell Property Section, Dean Kochan’s other current service activities related to his work on property law matters include significant activities across a wide spectrum of groups:

  • Serving as Contributing Editor of the Keeping Current-Property section in Probate & Property, the bi-monthly magazine of the Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Section of the American Bar Association
  • Serving as the Secretary for the Section on Property Law for the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)
  • Serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group
  • Serving as a Program Committee Member for the 2016 annual meeting of the Association for Law, Property & Society (ALPS)
  • Serving as the Vice-Chair of the Committee on Environment & Natural Resources Regulation for the ABA Section on Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

Dean Kochan’s scholarship on property law issues has also been extensive. In addition to publications in other areas of law, Dean Kochan’s recent property-related articles published (or in production for publication) across just the past three years include:

Dean Kochan has also just finished the editing process for a book chapter he authored on eminent domain law in Illinois, to be published in a forthcoming 2016 book on Illinois constitutional reform.  That chapter builds on one of Dean Kochan’s heavily-cited early works of property law scholarship that examines interest group influence on municipalities and other governmental units as eminent domain authorities  – “Public Use” and the Independent Judiciary: Condemnation in an Interest-Group Perspective, 3 Texas Review of Law & Politics 49 (1998).

Dean Kochan’s broad work serving the larger legal community is an extension of the service he already provides here at Chapman. In addition to serving as Associate Dean, he also, for example, serves as an Advisory Committee Member for Chapman’s university-wide Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (“IETL”), and Dean Kochan received the 2014 Valerie Scudder Award from Chapman University, a selective merit-based honor awarded by peers in recognition of outstanding achievement in scholarship, teaching, and service. It is one of the highest honors given to a faculty member at the university.

Dean Kochan currently teaches Property I & II and Administrative Law, and his other courses have included a Natural Resources Law & Policy seminar, Law & Economics seminar, Corporations, Agency & Partnership, and Federal Courts.

Click here for Dean Kochan’s full biographical profile and here for his curriculum vitae with a more complete list of his publications.