Eduardo Peñalver

Eduardo Moises Peñalver is an American legal scholar who has been the 49th president of Georgetown University since July 1, 2026. His family is Catholic. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a Master of Arts from Oriel College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and Hermano of Lambda Upsilon Lambda. He received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.

Peñalver clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Career Peñalver began his academic career at the Fordham University School of Law in 2003. In 2006, Peñalver joined the faculty at Cornell Law School and was a visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Yale Law School. He moved to the University of Chicago Law School in 2012, where he served as the John P. Wilson Professor of Law.

He is an expert on property and land use law as well as the intersection of law and religion. He has authored, co-authored or edited five books on property including Property Outlaws, examining the role of disobedience in the development of property law, and An Introduction to Property Theory.

From 2014 to 2021, Peñalver was the Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell Law School, succeeding Stewart J. Schwab. He was the first person of Latin descent to become dean of an Ivy League law school.

He became the 22nd president of Seattle University in 2021, becoming the first layperson to lead the Catholic institution.

On October 15, 2025, Georgetown University announced that Peñalver would become the university's 49th president, succeeding president John DeGioia and interim president Robert Groves. He took office on July 1, 2026. He is the second layperson to lead the Catholic institution. They have two sons. Publications

Books

Scholarly publications Exactions Creep, 2013 S. Ct. Rev. 287 (2014) (with Lee Fennell) The Right Not to Use in Patent and Property Law, 98 Cornell L. Rev. 1437 (2013) (with Oskar Liivak) The Illusory Right to Abandon, 109 Mich. L. Rev. 191 (2010) Regulatory Taxings, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 2182 (2004)

Opinion writing "The Obscure Case That Could Blow Up American Civil-Rights and Consumer-Protection Laws", The Atlantic, March 25, 2021 The Obscure Case That Could Blow Up American Civil-Rights and Consumer-Protection Laws "Remembering Justice Ginsburg", Cornell Chronicle, Sept. 2020, Peñalver: Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue – Remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54 | Cornell Chronicle