Joseph W. Singer

Distinguished Lecturer

Joseph W. Singer, the Bussey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is the intellectual architect of a modern social theory of property that has substantially redirected scholarship in the field—focusing on social justice concerns, including the connection between property law and distributive justice, anti-discrimination law, and equitable social relationships.He also teaches and writes about property law, conflict of laws, and federal Indian law. Singer, who has been teaching at Harvard Law School since 1992, received his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Singer has authored close to 100 law journal articles—which have appeared in the likes of the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, and the Stanford Law Review—and six books, including his path-breaking “Entitlement” in 2000 and “No Freedom Without Regulation” in 2015. He recently was identified as one of the top three most cited U.S. property scholars of this decade. In 2016 he received the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize.