Daniel Kelly serves as dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
Before becoming dean, Kelly taught from 2009-2024 at the University of Notre Dame, where he served as director of the Law School's Program on Law & Economics and founding director of the University’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate.
In leading the Fitzgerald Institute, Kelly recruited new faculty in multiple departments, launched new courses and an interdisciplinary minor with over 500 students, hosted academic conferences and industry events and helped to raise endowed funding for several new academic programs and initiatives in real estate investment and development, affordable housing, Church properties, and property law. Kelly is a member of the American Law Institute and American College of Real Estate Lawyers.
Kelly’s scholarship focuses on the economic analysis of property rights, including the acquisition and assembly of land, the division and use of property through contracts, leases, and trusts, and the transfer of property at death. 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.
Before entering the legal academy, Kelly was a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and an attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. He was a research fellow at Yale and Harvard, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the Louis D. Brandeis Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Kelly is a member of the American Law Institute and American College of Real Estate Lawyers. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Notre Dame. Kelly and his wife Kate are the proud parents of five children.
Law and Economics, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws (Mark Bennett, Lusina Ho, Adam Hofri, & Richard Nolan eds., Oxford University Press 2024)
On Disgorgement and Punitive Damages in Trust Law, 107 Iowa Law Review 2079-2133 (2022).
Law and Economics, in Oxford Handbook of The New Private Law (Andrew S. Gold, John C.P. Goldberg, Daniel B. Kelly, Emily L. Sherwin, & Henry E. Smith eds., Oxford University Press 2020).
Fiduciary Principles in Fact-Based Fiduciary Relationships, in Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law 3-22 (Evan J. Criddle, Paul B. Miller, & Robert H. Sitkoff eds., Oxford University Press 2019).
Dividing Possessory Rights, in Law and Economics of Possession 175-206 (Yun-Chien Chang ed., Cambridge University Press 2015).
The Right to Include, 63 Emory Law Journal 857-924 (2014).
Restricting Testamentary Freedom: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications, 82 Fordham Law Review 1125-1185 (2013).
Strategic Spillovers, 111 Columbia Law Review 1641-1721 (2011).
Acquiring Land Through Eminent Domain: Justifications, Limitations, and Alternatives, in Research Handbook on the Economic Analysis of Property Law 344-371 (Kenneth Ayotte & Henry E. Smith eds., Edward Elgar 2011).
Pretextual Takings: Of Private Developers, Local Governments, and Impermissible Favoritism, 17 Supreme Court Economic Review 173-235 (2009).
The Limitations of Majoritarian Land Assembly, 122 Harvard Law Review Forum 7-17 (2009).
The “Public Use” Requirement in Eminent Domain Law: A Rationale Based on Secret Purchases and Private Influence, 92 Cornell Law Review 1-65 (2006).