After a stellar career so far of graduating from Yale Law in 1999, clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and going on to serve as John P. Wilson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, Eduardo Peñalver can now add a further success to his roster: he began his term as Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell Law School, and is the first Latino dean at any Ivy League law school.
Peñalver’s experience and education has been broad and formative, beginning with his B.A. from Cornell’s college of Arts and Sciences in 1994 and continuing through his study of philosophy and theology as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. This work prepped him for his integral work as a primary figure of the “progressive property” movement — for which he has published various articles for Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and for Cornell.
Furthermore, he has published books on property law, such as “Property Outlaws,” in 2010, co-authored with Sonia Katyal, and recently, “An Introduction to Property Theory,” in 2011, co-authored with Gregory Alexander.
“I am excited and honored to return home to Cornell Law School as its next dean. My most formative intellectual experiences have been at Cornell, both as an undergraduate and, more recently, as a member of the law school faculty,” said Peñalver, as reported on the Cornell Chronicle. “Cornell Law School is a remarkable community of scholars and students. It is diverse, intellectually rigorous and exceptionally collegial, and I look forward to working with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and the university leadership to guide the law school into the future.”
In making that transition he has been working for months with the former dean, Steward J. Schwab, who plans to leave on sabbatical during the 2014-2015 term before returning to teach.