Conference Speakers 2022

Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus
Co-counsel, Land Use Law Center

General

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 COVID-19 viral 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.

Education and Distinguished Service

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 1991-92, 1997-98, 1999-2000, and 2000-01 academic years. He received the Richard L. Ottinger Faculty Achievement Award in 1999 and won the Goettel Prize for faculty scholarship in 2006, and was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2016-2017. In 2009, he was awarded 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 is on the advisory boards of the Sustainable Development Code, the NY Planning Federation, and the Westchester/Fairfield chapter of the Urban Land Institute.

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. He has 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. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Land Use and Environmental Law Review, published by Thomson- West and of the State and Local Government eJournal of the American Bar Association.

Professor Nolon received a Fulbright Scholarship to study sustainable development law in Argentina in 1994-1995.

Scholarship

Professor Nolon 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. He is co- author of Thomson-West’s Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law in a Nutshell. 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. Professor Nolon's 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. His article “Champions of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform,” published by the Harvard Environmental Law Review, won the Goettel Prize for faculty scholarship for 2006 at Pace University School of Law. In 2013, Professor Nolon won one of eight Pace University Research Excellence Awards.

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. An anthology of seven of his articles was published in 2006 as a special issue of the Pace Environmental Law Review. He has produced five books published by the Environmental Law Institute on the topics of land use law, open space protection, local environmental law, and the mitigation of damage caused by natural disasters. His current research interest is the management of climate change through sustainable development law. He published nearly 50 articles in the New York Law Journal and over sixty law review articles on various aspects of land use and sustainable development law.

Professor of Law and Senior VP, Academic Affairs,
and Provost, Graduate and Professional Divisions

Patricia Salkin served as Dean and Professor of Law at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center from 2012-2016. She currently serves as Provost, Graduate and Professional Divisions and Professor of Law.

Prior to joining Touro  Law Center, Salkin was the Raymond & Ella Smith Distinguished Professor of Law, as well as Associate Dean and Director of the Government Law Center of Albany Law School. Salkin is co-chair of the NYS Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar and she was a member of the City Bar’s Task Force on New Lawyers in a Changing Profession. She is a past chair of the American Association of Law School’s State & Local Government Law Section, and is the author of hundreds of books, articles and columns including a recent piece in the Journal of Legal Education on incorporating best practices into the teaching of land use law. She served two terms as an appointed member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, a Federal Advisory Committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, Salkin holds and has held many leadership positions within both the ABA and the New York State Bar Association including: Past Chair of the ABA State and Local Government Section and current member of the Standing Committee on Governmental Affairs (ABA); Past Chair of the NYSBA Municipal Law Section and Founding Member and Past Chair of the NYSBA Committee on Attorneys in Public Service; and she has chaired numerous NYSBA task forces including one focusing on: government ethics, eminent domain, and town and village justice courts.

A nationally recognized scholar on land use law and zoning, Salkin is the author of the popular blog, Law of the Land. Her land use publications include: The 4-volume 4th edition of New York Zoning Law & Practice (1999-present); the 5-volume 5th edition of American Law of Zoning (2008-present); Bordering on Madness: An American Land Use Tale Companion (with Popper and Avitale)(2008); Land Use & Sustainable Development: Cases and Materials, 8th ed. (Thomson West) (with Nolon) (2012); Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law in a Nutshell (Thomson Reuters) (with Nolon) (2010); Land Use in a Nutshell (Thomson West) (with Nolon) (2007); The Greening of Local Governments (with Hirokawa, eds.) (ABA Press 2012); and the annual Zoning and Planning Law Handbook, ed. (Thomson Reuters).

She has served on the Board of Directors of the New York Planning Federation, and has been active in land use reform efforts including membership on the Land Use Advisory Committee of the NYS Legislative Commission on Rural Resources. She is a reporter for the American Planning Association's Planning & Environmental Law and on the Editorial Advisory Board for The Urban Lawyer produced by UMKC School of Law for the ABA. Dean Salkin continues to serve as the long-term chair of the American Planning Association's Amicus Curiae Committee. She has consulted on land use issues for many national organizations including: the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, the National Academy for Public Administration and the National Governor’s Association.

Salkin is committed to advancing the status of women in the legal profession. She is the editor of PIONEERING WOMEN LAWYERS: FROM KATE STONEMAN TO PRESENT, Editor (American Bar Association Press, 2008), and she has delivered speeches and earned recognition from womens' bar associations, women's business organizations and non-profit organizations focused on women. She is a member of the Suffolk County Women's Bar Association, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and a former member of the Capital District Women's Bar Association. At Touro Law, Salkin and her family have established two scholarships, one awarded to a rising 2L (F/T of P/T) or rising 3L (five-year PT) female student who shows commitment to women’s and/or diversity issues, and a second scholarship awarded annually to a law student who is either currently or was previously a K-12 teacher pursuing school while also raising a family; or someone raising a family who has expressed an interest in education law.