Christopher Serkin, who studies and teaches property and land use law, will join the faculty of Vanderbilt Law School in summer 2013. Serkin’s appointment as professor of law was announced by Chris Guthrie, dean of Vanderbilt Law School.
Serkin currently serves as a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches courses in property and land use law and trusts and estates. He joined Brooklyn’s law faculty after teaching for two years as an acting assistant professor at New York University School of Law. In 2008 and 2009, he held visiting appointments in the law schools of the University of Chicago, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. At Brooklyn, he was the professor of the year in 2006-07.
Professor Serkin’s provocative scholarship addressing local property law, the Takings Clause, land use regulations and eminent domain has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, New York University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review and Northwestern University Law Review, among others. He is the author of the forthcoming Concepts and Insights book, Property Law, and a co-author of the forthcoming casebook Land Use Controls (4th edition) with Robert Ellickson, Vicki Been and Roderick Hills.
Serkin earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Yale University and his J.D. at the University of Michigan Law School, where he was a Clarence Darrow Scholar, articles editor of the Michigan Law Review and graduated Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for Judge John M. Walker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge J. Garvan Murtha of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont. He practiced law as an associate with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and served as a consultant to the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure’s Subcommittee on Style, part of the standing rules committee for the judiciary, before joining the legal academy.
“We look forward to welcoming Chris Serkin to our faculty next summer,” said Dean Chris Guthrie. “He is an accomplished scholar of property and land use law, an excellent teacher, and brings expertise in local government law. Along with Mike Vandenbergh, J.B. Ruhl, and Jim Rossi, he will be an integral part of our Energy, Environment and Land Use Program.”
