The University of Chicago Law School is pleased to announce that Max Pam Professor of Law Lee Fennell will participate in the Eighth Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, sponsored by William & Mary Law School, in Beijing, China, October 14-15. The Conference brings together esteemed scholars, jurists, and practitioners from the United States and China to discuss the evolution of property rights on a global scale.

The conference is being held at and in cooperation with Tsinghua University School of Law, one of China’s top universities and law schools. Holding the conference in China "will foster a comparative framework for the discussion of property rights that is long overdue given the strong ties between the United States and China and China's dynamic role in the world economy," explained William & Mary Law School Professor Lynda Butler.

William & Mary Law School Dean Davison M. Douglas said the slate of participants comprised many scholars “whose work forms the foundation of contemporary American property law jurisprudence.” Professor Fennell will participate on a panel entitled “Property as an Instrument of Social Policy.”

During the Conference, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will receive the 2011 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize and will be a featured speaker. O'Connor served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006. She made history in 1981 as the first woman nominated to serve on the high court. Her widely cited dissenting opinion in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) has been hailed as a pivotal opinion in property law jurisprudence. She became Chancellor of the College of William & Mary following her retirement from the judiciary. A formal reception will be held on October 13 at the United States Embassy in Beijing to honor Justice O’Connor and the conference’s Chinese host, Tsinghua University School of Law.

Lee Fennell received her JD magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1990. Since 2007, she has been a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where she served as a Bigelow Fellow from 1999 to 2001. In the intervening years, she taught at the University of Texas School of Law (2001-2004) and at the University of Illinois College of Law (2004-2007). She has also held visiting positions at Yale Law School, NYU School of Law, and the University of Virginia School of Law. Before teaching law, she practiced at Pettit & Martin, the State and Local Legal Center, and the Virginia School Boards Association. Her teaching and research interests include property, torts, land use, housing, social welfare law, state and local government law, and public finance. She is the author of The Unbounded Home: Property Values Beyond Property Lines (Yale University Press 2009), as well as many articles and essays.

For more details, please visit:

http://law.wm.edu/news/stories/2011/beijing-property-rights-conference3.php