John Infranca

Biography

Professor Infranca is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he received his B.A. in the Program of Liberal Studies and later returned for an M.T.S. in Moral Theology, and of New York University School of Law, where he served as an editor of the New York University Law Review.

Following law school, Professor Infranca served as a law clerk to Judge Berle Schiller, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Judge Julio Fuentes, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Infranca worked as a legal fellow at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, where he focused on land use regulation and affordable housing policy. He also taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. After college and during graduate school, Professor Infranca worked with a number of homeless services organizations, as a case manager for refugees, and as the director of a service-learning program in Mexico.

Professor Infranca's scholarship focuses on land use regulation, affordable housing policy, property theory, and law and religion. His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, Boston College Law Review, Florida Law Review, Richmond Law Review, Pepperdine Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Yale Law & Policy Review, and Stanford Law & Policy Review. His article Differentiating Exclusionary Tendencies was selected for presentation at the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. The New State Zoning: Land Use Preemption amid a Housing Crisis was selected by the Land Use & Environmental Law Review as one of the three best land use articles of the year. An earlier edition of the Land Use & Environmental Law Review selected his article The Sharing Economy as an Urban Phenomenon as one of the four best land use articles of that year.

Professor Infranca is also a co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy and of the forthcoming Elgar Research Agenda for Land Use and Planning Law. He is the lead researcher for the Massachusetts Zoning Atlas. His current research projects examine the legal and intellectual history of single-family zoning districts, land use and other regulatory barriers to the development of new forms of housing, the relationship between land use processes and the rule of law, Catholic Social Teaching and various urban law and policy issues, and topics at the intersection of religious liberty and property. Professor Infranca will serve as a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School in Spring 2024.

Education

• BA, University of Notre Dame
• MTS, University of Notre Dame
• JD, New York University

Publications

Articles

• Single-Family Zoning and the Police Power: Early Debates in Boston and Seattle, Cityscape (forthcoming November 2023)
• Singling Out Single-Family Zoning 112 GEO. L.J. 659 (2023).
• Variances: A Canary in the Coal Mine for Zoning Reform? (with Ronnie Farr), 40 PEPP. L. REV. 443 (2023) (symposium).
• Differentiating Exclusionary Tendencies, 72 FLA. L. REV. 1271 (2020).
• The Sharing Economy and the Allocation of Urban Space, 42 ZONING & PLAN. L. REP., No. 3 (March 2019).
• The New State Zoning: Land Use Preemption Amid a Housing Crisis, 60 B.C.L. Rev. 823 (2019).
• (Communal) Life, (Religious) Liberty, and Property, 2017 MICH. ST. L. REV. 481 (2017). 
• The Sharing Economy as an Urban Phenomenon (with Nestor Davidson), 34 YALE L. & POL Y REV. 215 (2016). 
• Intermediary Institutions and the Sharing Economy, 90 TULANE. L. REV. ONLINE 29 (2016) (solicited response). 
• Spaces for Sharing: Micro Units amid the Shift from Ownership to Access, 43 FORDHAM URB. L.J. (2016). (Symposium: Sharing Economy, Sharing City). 
• Housing Resource Bundles: Distributive Justice and Federal Low-Income Housing Policy, 49 U. RICH. L. REV. 1071 (2015). 
• Housing Changing Households, 25 STAN. L. & POL'Y REV. 53 (2014), reprinted in 2015 ZONING AND PLANNING LAW HANDBOOK (2015) (Patricia E. Salkin, editor).
• Institutional Free Exercise and Religious Land Uses, 34 CARDOZO L. REV. 1693 (2013) , reprinted in 2014 ZONING AND PLANNING LAW HANDBOOK (2014) (Patricia E. Salkin, editor)
• Transferable Development Rights Programs as Post Zoning (with Vicki Been), 78 BROOK. L. REV. 435 (2013)
• Safer than the Mattress? Protecting Social Security Benefits from Bank Freezes and Garnishments, 83 ST. JOHN 'S L. REV. 1127 (2009)
• The Earned Income Tax Credit as an Incentive to Report: Engaging the Informal Economy through Tax Policy, 83 N.Y.U.L. REV. 203 (2008)

Books

• A Research Agenda for US Land Use and Planning Law (editor, with Sarah Schindler) (2023, Edward Elgar Press)
• CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK ON THE LAW OF THE SHARING ECONOMY (editor, with Nestor Davidson & Michele Finck) (2018, Cambridge University Press). 

Book Chapters

• Themes and Trends in Land Use and Planning Law Research: Introduction to A Research Agenda for US Land Use and Planning Law (with Sarah Schindler) in A Research Agenda for US Land Use and Planning Law (editor, with Sarah Schindler) (2023, Edward Elgar Press)
• Sharing in Cities: Why Here? Why Now? (with Nestor Davidson) in A MODERN GUIDE TO THE SHARING ECONOMY (Jonathan Corcoran & Thomas Sigler, eds.) (2021).
• The Place of the Sharing Economy, in THE CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK ON THE LAW OF THE SHARING ECONOMY (with Nestor Davidson) (Nestor Davidson, John Infranca & Michele Finck, eds.) (2018).

Other Publications

• Assessing the Prospects for Fair Housing, 30 J. OF AFFORDABLE HOUS. & CMTY. DEV. LAW 365 (2022) (book review of FURTHERING FAIR HOUSING: PROSPECTS FOR RACIAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA'S NEIGHBORHOODS (Justin P. Steil, Nicholas F. Kelly, Lawrence J. Vale & Maia S. Woluchem, eds., 2021)).
• The Subordination of Private Property and David Ruccio's Occasional Links & Commentary, 33 RETHINKING MARXISM: A J. OF ECON., CULTURE & SOCIETY 355 (2021) (invited symposium essay on David Ruccio's Occasional Links & Commentary on Economics, Culture and Society).
• Housing in THE LOCAL POWER AND POLITICS REVIEW (2020) (with Francesca Menes).
• Slicing (and transferring) Development (symposium essay on Lee Fennell's Slices and Lumps: Division and Aggregation in Law and Life (University of Chicago Press, 2019)) in U. CHI. L. REV. ONLINE (invited contribution).
• Regulatory Challenges in the Sharing Economy (with Nestor Davidson), 27:2 THE PUBLIC LAWYER 2 (Summer 2019).
• Book review of Evidence and Innovation in Housing Law and Policy (Lee Anne Fennel & Benjamin Keys, eds., 2018) 27 J. OF AFFORADABLE HOUSE. & CMTY. DEV. LAW 237 (2018).
• The Sharing Economy and the Upside of Disrupting Local Governance, HARV. L. REV. BLOG (Nov. 21, 2017) (with Nestor M. Davidson). 
• Citybnb: Has the Time Come for Homegrown Alternatives to Short-Term Rental Platforms , HARV. L. REV. BLOG (May 29, 2018). 

Bar Admittance

• NY
• U.S. Court of Appeals 3rd Circuit