Faculty Profile

Jeffrey Evans Stake

Robert A. Lucas Chair of Law

Biography

Professor Jeffrey Stake is the President of SEAL, the Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law (sealsite.org), a co-founder of the Midwest Law and Economics Association (MLEA), and a member of the Indiana University Cognitive Science Program.

Stake's interdisciplinary research focuses primarily on property law and family law, but has been extended to topics ranging from the First Amendment and divorce law to law school grading and rankings. One recent article applies evolutionary analysis in search of the roots of property law, arguing that some rules of property reflect basic human instincts. It was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the oldest continuously publishing scientific journal in the world.

Stake teaches Property, Wills and Trusts, and Land-Use Controls. His engaging and popular style has led to visiting appointments at Illinois, Colorado, Georgetown, and Paris II (Pantheon-Assas). At Indiana Law, he has received the Leon Wallace Teaching Award and the Trustees Teaching Award.

Selected Works

• Income and Career Satisfaction in the Legal Profession: Survey Data from Indiana Law Graduates, with Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt and Kaushik Mukhopadhaya, 4 JOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES 939-981 (2008).
• Just (and Efficient?) Compensation for Governmental Expropriations (accepted as chapter in book on law, mind, and brain).
• Upper West Side Story: The Symphony Space v. Pergola Properties (accepted for publication as chapter in Property Stories collection).
• Evolution of Rules in a Common Law System: Differential Litigation of the Fee Tail and Other Perpetuities, 32 FLORIDA STATE LAW REVIEW 401 (2005).
• The property 'instinct', 259 THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 1763 (2004).
• Can Evolutionary Science Contribute to Discussions of Law?, 41 JURIMETRICS, JOURNAL OF LAW, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 379 (2001).
• The Uneasy Case for Adverse Possession, 89 GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL 2419 (2001).
• Are We Buyers or Hosts? A Memetic Approach to the First Amendment, 52 ALABAMA LAW REVIEW 1213 (2001).
• Lifting the Veil of Ignorance: Personalizing the Marriage Contract (with Eric Rasmusen), 73 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL 453 (1998).
• Loss Aversion and Involuntary Transfers of Title, in LAW AND ECONOMICS: NEW AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol. 4 of CRITIC OF INSTITUTIONS (Robin Paul Malloy and Christopher K. Braun, Eds.). New York: P. Lang, 1995.
• Mandatory Planning for Divorce, 45 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW 397 (1992).
• Darwin, Donations, and the Illusion of Dead Hand Control, 64 TULANE LAW REVIEW 705 (1990).
• Toward an Economic Understanding of Touch and Concern, 1988 DUKE LAW JOURNAL 925 (1988).

Related Links

• Social Science Research Network
• Curriculum Vitae
• Publications
• Download Professor Stake's grading software
• Play Professor Stake's Law School Ranking Game