Lingxi Chenyang ’20 Appointed Associate Professor at University of Utah College of Law

Lingxi Chenyang ’20

The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) congratulates Lingxi Chenyang ’20, a former LEAP Student Fellow, on her appointment as Professor at S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, where she will start next year. A joint J.D./Ph.D. who studied law at Yale and philosophy at the University of Michigan, Chenyang’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of property law, climate law, and food and environmental law. 

Chenyang is currently Environmental Law Fellow at the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University Bloomington, where she recently published “Farming with Trees: Reforming U.S. Farm Policy to Expand Agroforestry and Mitigate Climate Change,” an examination of policy obstacles to climate-friendly agroforestry systems. While a student at Yale Law School, Chenyang led the Yale Animal Law Society and won the inaugural New York University Animal Studies Award for her paper, “Is Meat the New Tobacco? Regulating Food Demand in the Age of Climate Change,” which examined how strategies to reduce tobacco use could reduce meat consumption as a climate mitigation measure. A description of Chenyang’s research said she aims to use her scholarship “to infuse property law with an understanding of the natural sciences the same way that today’s lawmakers consider economics in rulemaking.”

“I have great admiration for Lingxi as a scholar and intellectual,” said LEAP Faculty Co-Director Doug Kysar. “The thought of her joining legal academia gives me great hope for the animal and environmental law fields, as well as for the living world those fields aim to protect.”

“My sincere thanks to Professor Doug Kysar, Viveca Morris, and the LEAP program for generously supporting my research on climate change and animal law in law school,” said Chenyang, who also expressed “encouragement for LEAP fellows and affiliates — especially those in underrepresented groups — to pursue careers in academia.” 

The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School works to produce scholarship about the legal, scientific, and moral questions raised by humanity’s treatment of other animals, and to empower Yale scholars and students to create positive legal and political change for animals, people, and their environment. The LEAP Student Fellows program provides community and support for graduate students at work on these questions.