Yun-chien Chang

Prof. Yun-chien Chang is the Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law at Cornell Law School and Director of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law & Culture. Before joining Cornell, he was a Research Professor (now an Affiliated Research Fellow) at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and served as Director of its Empirical Legal Studies Center. He has also served as a visiting professor at New York University, the University of Chicago, University of St. Gallen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Haifa, and the Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics. In addition, He has conducted research at Free University of Berlin, University of Paris II, and the University of Tokyo. Prof. Chang is a co-editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies and an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property. He is President emeritus of the Asian Law and Economics Association and served as a director of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies from 2022 to 2025.

His current academic interests focus on economic, empirical, comparative, and Hohfeldian analyses of private law (particularly property law and wills, trusts, and estates), as well as economic and empirical studies of judicial behavior and civil litigation. Prof. Chang has authored and co-authored more than 170 journal articles and book chapters. His English-language articles have appeared in leading journals worldwide, including the 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; Journal of Law and Empirical Analysis, International Review of Law and Economics; European Journal of Law and Economics; European Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, I·CON; the University of Chicago Law Review; Southern California Law Review; Yale Journal on Regulation; Notre Dame Law Review; Iowa Law Review and Supreme Court Economic Review.

His monograph Private Property and Takings Compensation: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Analysis (Edward Elgar, 2013) won 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 has been widely reviewed, including in two book symposia. Prof. Chang is also a co-author of Property and Trust Law in Taiwan (Wolters Kluwer, 2017; 2nd ed. 2022).

In addition, Prof. Chang has (co-)edited four other books: Empirical Legal Analysis: Assessing the Performance of Legal Institutions (Routledge, 2014); Law and Economics of Possession (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Private Law in China and Taiwan: Economic and Legal Analyses (Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Selection and Decision in Judicial Process Around the World: Empirical Inquiries (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

He has authored five books in Chinese published in China and Taiwan: Economic Analysis of Law: A Methodological Primer (Peking University Press, 2023); Compensation for Physical and Regulatory Takings of Land: Theory and Practice (Angle, 2013; 2nd ed. 2020); Economic Analysis of Property Law (Standard Chinese: Angle, 2015; 2nd ed. 2021; simplified Chinese: Peking University Press, 2019); Empirical Legal Studies: Principles, Methods, and Applications (New Sharing, 2019; 2nd ed. 2022); and Interpreting Private Law: A Social Scientific Approach (New Sharing, 2020). He has also (co-)edited three additional Chinese-language volumes: An Empirical Legal Studies: International Perspectives (Contemporary China Publishing House, 2024); An Empirical Legal Studies Reader: Domestic Perspectives (The Law Press, 2020); and Empirical Studies of the Judicial Systems 2011 (Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, 2013).

Prof. Chang’s academic achievements include his selection as an Academia Sinica Presidential Scholar (2021–2022) and receipt of the 2025 and 2019 Distinguished Article Awards from the Asian Law and Society Association, the Academia Sinica Career Development Award (2017–2021), the Outstanding Scholar Award (2016), the Academia Sinica Law Journal Award (2016, 2018), the Junior Research Investigators Award (2015), the Best Poster Prize at the 2011 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and multiple competitive research grants.

He serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals, including Law and Social Inquiry, Journal of Law and Empirical Analysis, and European Journal of Law and Economics, among others.

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