John R. Nolon
Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus;
Co-Counsel, Land Use Law Center
Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
John R. Nolon is Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University where he supervises student research and publications regarding land use, sustainable development, climate change, housing insecurity, racial inequity, and the coronavirus pandemic. He is Co-counsel to the Law School's Land Use Law Center, which he founded in 1993. He served as Adjunct Professor of land use law and policy at the Yale School of the Environment from 2001–2016. Before he joined the law school faculty, he founded and directed the Housing Action Counsel to foster the development of affordable housing.
Education and Distinguished Service
Professor Nolon received his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan Law School where he was a member of the Barrister's Academic Honor Society. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Nebraska, where he was President of the Senior Honor Society. The Haub School of Law recognizes him in two ways: the John R. Nolon Land Use Student Achievement award is presented each year at the land use conference and at graduation, and the Pace Environmental Law Review awards the annual Professor John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition to the top three submissions by law students from law schools throughout the nation.
In 2009, he was presented the National Leadership Award for a Planning Advocate by the American Planning Association. The International City/County Management Association presented its Honorary Membership Award to Professor Nolon in 2014, its highest award to a person outside the city management profession for exemplary service to local government. The NY Planning Federation presented him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. He served as a consultant to President Carter's Council on Development Choices for the 1980's, President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development, New York Governor George Pataki's Transition Team, and Governor Elliot Spitzer’s Transition Team.
Scholarship
Professor Nolon was named one of two Distinguished Professors in 2014 by Pace University. Previously, he served as the James D. Hopkins Professor from 2009-2011 and the Charles A. Frueauff Research Professor of Law during the 1991–1992, 1997–1998, 1999–2000, and 2000–2001 academic years. He received the Richard L. Ottinger Faculty Achievement Award in 1999, won the Goettel Prize for faculty scholarship in 2006, and was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2016–2017. He is co-author of the nation's oldest casebook on land use law: Land Use and Sustainable Development Law: Cases and Materials, currently in its ninth edition.
Professor Nolon's article entitled "The Advent of Local Environmental Law," published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, was selected by Thompson-West's Land Use and Environmental Law Review as one of the ten best articles on environmental and land use law published in 2002. His article on the origins of smart growth, published in The Urban Lawyer, was also selected as one of the top ten articles in the nation on the topics of environmental and land use law in 2003.
Professor Nolon received a Fulbright Scholarship to develop a framework law for sustainable development in Argentina where he worked from 1994 through 1996. A collection of articles produced as a result of this work appeared in a symposium edition of the Pace Environmental Law Review and was published in Argentina in Spanish. He published nearly 50 articles in the New York Law Journal and over 60 law review articles on various aspects of land use and sustainable development law. An anthology of seven of his articles was published in 2006 as a special issue of the Pace Environmental Law Review. He has produced six books published by the Environmental Law Institute on the topics of land use law, open space protection, local environmental law, managing climate change, and the mitigation of damage caused by natural disasters. His current research focusses on the management of climate change through a strategy known as Climate Resilient Development on which he is working with over 40 Haub land use students.
