Maureen Brady

Molly Brady is a professor of law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches property law and related subjects. Her scholarship uses historical analyses of property institutions and land use doctrines to explore broader theoretical questions. Her current research projects involve the relationship between covenants and zoning, the persistence of community knowledge in property doctrine, and state constitutional takings law. She is also an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Fourth Restatement of Property.

Previously, Professor Brady taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the 2019 UVA Student Council Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2018 Z Society Distinguished Faculty Award for “one outstanding member of the University’s faculty who has positively impacted the student body,” and an invitation to the Seven Society 27th Annual Monticello Dinner Series for “exemplary scholarship and transformative instruction of students.” Her recent article, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” won both the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Papers Prize for junior faculty members in their first five years of law teaching and the American Society for Legal History's William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize for the year's best paper by an early-career scholar.

Professor Brady received an AB summa cum laude in history from Harvard College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women's Athletics Prize for the top female scholar-athlete. Professor Brady then obtained her JD from Yale Law School, where she was the two-time recipient of the Parker Prize for legal history scholarship and was awarded the Quintin Johnstone Prize in Real Property Law, the Jewell Prize for an outstanding contribution to a Yale Law School journal, and the Cullen Prize for the best paper written by a first-year student. Following graduation, she served as a clerk to Judge Bruce M. Selya on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and practiced at Ropes and Gray in Boston as a corporate associate focusing on intellectual property transactions. After leaving practice, she was in the first graduating class of the PhD in Law program at Yale University.

Education

• J.D. Yale Law School (2008 — 2011)
• A.B., summa cum laude Harvard University (2004 — 2008)
• New Hartford High School (2001 — 2004)

Companies

• Professor Harvard Law School (2021)
• Assistant Professor Harvard Law School (2019 — 2021)
• Associate Professor University of Virginia School of Law (2016 — 2019)
• Corporate Associate Ropes & Gray LLP (2012 — 2013)
• Law Clerk to the Honorable Bruce M. Selya U.S. Court of Appeals (2011 — 2012)
• Summer Associate Ropes & Gray LLP (2010 — 2010)
• Extern New Haven State's Attorney's Office (2009 — 2009)
• Summer Associate Wolf Greenfield (2009 — 2009)
• Research Assistant Oxford Institute of Archaeology (2006 — 2006)

Areas of Interest

• Environmental Law and Policy
• State and Local Government
• Property
• Private Law
• Legal History
• Environmental Law and Policy: Land Use Law