Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Jeremy is an attorney in Pacific Legal Foundation’s Property Rights practice. He focuses on the fundamental rights of landowners to use and develop their property. He also leads PLF’s Coastal Land Rights Project, which puts him routinely at odds with the California Coastal Commission—but he wouldn’t mind being contacted about any government abuses in Hawaii or the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Some of his career highlights at PLF include forcing the mayor of Mount Dora, Florida, to publicly apologize for the city’s vendetta against the owners of a home painted like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” and obtaining an opinion ordering just compensation for the owners of a small offshore island in Florida (that just happened to be named after their war hero father), after government regulations stripped all economic uses of the property.
Jeremy obtained his undergraduate degree in communications from the University of Central Florida, but for every minute he spent in classes, he spent five more playing guitar or bass in several noteworthy-for-their-obscurity rock bands. A few tours across the country later, Jeremy realized he was spending all of his free time reading about the principles of liberty and decided to make a career out of it.
He graduated cum laude from Chapman University, Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he was president of the Federalist Society, senior articles editor of the Chapman Law Review, and “that guy who keeps trying to talk about the Constitution” on the Chapman moot court team. His two favorite parts of law school were externing for Judge Andrew J. Guilford in the Central District of California and getting the top grade in administrative law from his favorite professor.
Jeremy’s free time is almost never actually free, because he has 11-year-old twin boys and a golden retriever named Ripley (yes, as in Ellen Ripley, warrant officer of the Nostromo). But he will always find time to talk your ear off about freedom, guitars, or Nebraska football.
Director, Faculty Relations, The Federalist Society
Katie McClendon is the Director of Faculty Relations at the Federalist Society, where she has worked since 2015.
Katie holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from Biola University, where she was a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. She is a fellow of the John Jay Institute and the Blackstone Legal Fellowship. Katie is originally from Los Angeles, and she now lives with her husband and four children in Atlanta.
Explainer Episode 85 - Rebuilding California: Lessons from the Pacific Palisades Fire
Donald J. Kochan, Jeremy Talcott
RTP's Fourth Branch Podcast
The 2025 Pacific Palisades Fire has underscored the challenges of building in California’s complex regulatory...
Topics
How Far Can the President Take the Recess Appointments Power?
As President Trump prepares for a second term, he has voiced frustration with the Senate...
Topics
A Supreme Court Decision That Should Be Re-Heard
Last May, the Supreme Court issued a surprising and controversial decision in a case called Consumer...
Topics
Why the Firing of Gwynne Wilcox Could Be an Inflection Point for the NLRB—and Administrative Government
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, one of the three remaining members...
Topics
The Equal Rights Amendment: Is It the 28th Amendment?
On Friday, January 17, then-President Joe Biden stated his opinion that “the Equal Rights Amendment...
Topics
Supreme Court, Without Explanation, Refuses to Allow the State of Utah to Invoke the Court’s Original Jurisdiction to Challenge the Federal Government’s Retention of Millions of Acres of Land
Over the course of the past decade, the embers left by the Sagebrush Revolution—first ignited...
Federalist Society Review, Volume 25
Katie McClendon
Federalist Society Review, Volume 25
The Federalist Society Review is the legal journal of the Federalist Society. The Review is...
Topics
A Day to Celebrate Equality Under the Law and to Ponder Executive Power
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Inauguration Day! Below, please find a roundup of...
Topics
FCC v. Consumers’ Research: Will the Court Reinvigorate the Nondelegation Doctrine or Phone It In?
To protect liberty and promote accountability, our Constitution exclusively tasks the People’s elected representatives in...
Topics
Court Holds the Corporate Transparency Act Is Unconstitutional: A Victory for Limited Government and the Right to Privacy
Earlier this month, a federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement...