Yun-chien Chang is Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law at Cornell Law School and also directs the Clarke Program in East Asian Law & Culture. Before moving to Cornell, he was a Research Professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan and serves as the Director of its Empirical Legal Studies Center. He has also served a visiting professor at New York University, the University of Chicago, St. Gallen University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Haifa University, and Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics. He has also conducted research at Free University of Berlin, University of Paris II, and University of Tokyo. Chang is a co-editor of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies and an Associate Reporter on American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property. Chang is President of Asian Law and Economics Association and a director of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.

His current academic interests focus on economic, empirical and comparative analysis of private law (particularly property law), as well as empirical studies of the judicial system. Chang has authored and co-authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. His English articles have appeared in leading journals around the world, such as Journal of Legal Studies; Journal of Legal Analysis; Journal of Law and Economics; American Law and Economics Review; Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; International Review of Law and Economics; European Journal of Law and Economics; I˙Con; the University of Chicago Law Review; Southern California Law Review; Notre Dame Law Review; Iowa Law Review and the Supreme Court Economic Review, among others.

His monograph Private Property and Takings Compensation: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Analysis (Edward Elgar, 2013) was a winner of the Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His second monograph Property Law: Comparative, Empirical, and Economic Analyses was published in June 2023 and will be widely reviewed. Chang (co-)edited Empirical Legal Analysis: Assessing the Performance of Legal Institutions (Routledge, 2014), Law and Economics of Possession (Cambridge UP, 2015), Private Law in China and Taiwan: Economic and Legal Analyses (Cambridge UP, 2016), and Selection and Decision in Judicial Process Around the World: Empirical Inquires (Cambridge UP, 2020). Chang is also a co-author of Property and Trust Law in Taiwan (Wolters Kluwer, 2017; 2nd edition, 2022).

He authored several books in Chinese published in China and Taiwan, Economic Analysis of Law: A Methodological Primer (Beijing UP, 2023), Compensation for Physical and Regulatory Takings of Land: Theory and Practice (Angle, 2013; 2nd edition, 2020), Economic Analysis of Property Law (Standard Chinese: Angle, 2015; 2nd edition, 2021; simplified Chinese: Beijing UP, 2019), Empirical Legal Studies: Principles, Methods, and Applications (New Sharing, 2019; 2nd edition, 2022), and Interpreting Private Law: A Social Scientific Approach (New Sharing, 2020), and also (co-)edited The Empirical Legal Studies Reader I: Domestic Perspectives (The Law Press, 2020), The Empirical Legal Studies Reader II (Contemporary China Publishing House, 2023 forthcoming) and Empirical Studies of the Judicial Systems 2011 (Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica; 2013).

Chang's academic achievements have led to him being selected as an Academia Sinica Presidential Scholar in 2021–2022, and won him the 2020 ALSA Distinguished Article Award, Academia Sinica Career Development Award in 2017–2021, Outstanding Scholar Award in 2016, Academia Sinica Law Journal Award in 2016 and 2018, the Junior Research Investigators Award in 2015, the Best Poster Prize at 2011 CELS, and several research grants.

Chang received his J.S.D. and LL.M. degree from New York University School of Law, where he was also a Lederman/Milbank Law and Economics Fellow and a Research Associate at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, NYU. He earned LL.B. and LL.M. degrees at National Taiwan University and passed the Taiwan bar. Chang has had working and consulting experience with prestigious law firms in Taiwan and has served as a legal assistant for the International Trade Commission.

(Photo credit: Cookie Tsai)