Daniel B. Kelly

Biographical Sketch

Daniel B. Kelly joined Scalia Law as dean in June 2026 from the University of St. Thomas School of Law (MN), where he was dean from 2024-2026. Previously, he was a professor for 15 years at the University of Notre Dame, where he served as founding director of the law school's Program on Law & Economics and founding director of the university’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate. He also has served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the Louis D. Brandeis Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Dean Kelly is a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and the American Law Institute and served as an Associate Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of Property.

An interdisciplinary scholar with expertise in property law, real estate, and law and economics, Dean Kelly focuses his scholarship on the economic analysis of property rights and real estate transactions. His research on eminent domain and land assembly has appeared in the Cornell Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, Supreme Court Economic Review, and Research Handbook on the Economic Analysis of Property Law. He presented two articles at the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum: “Strategic Spillovers,” published in the Columbia Law Review, and “The Right to Include,” published in the Emory Law Journal. His recent publications include “Fiduciary Principles in Fact-Based Fiduciary Relationships” in the Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law and “Law and Economics” in the Oxford Handbook of The New Private Law, for which he served as a co-editor. 

Previously, Kelly was a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, an attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, and a research fellow at Yale and Harvard. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Notre Dame.