Nestor Davidson

Appointment to start on July 1, 2025

In his scholarship and teaching, Nestor M. Davidson explores a set of related questions around transactional dynamics in real estate as well as regulatory frameworks for real estate markets. Those questions include doctrinal and legal-structural concerns in affordable housing and fair housing, property theory and the constitutional dimensions of property law, and legal determinants of the built environment. He has distinguished himself in the field of urban law, exploring undertheorized constitutional and administrative dimensions of urban governance, the role of law in city life, and critical fault-lines in the legal relationship between states and local governments.

Professor Davidson has published widely in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. Among the books he has co-authored or co-edited are Law and the New Urban Agenda (Routledge 2020); The New Preemption Reader (West 2019); The Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy (Cambridge University Press 2018); and Law Between Buildings: Emergent Global Perspectives on Urban Law (Routledge 2017). His current book project, Cities in Law: Urbanism as a Legal Phenomenon, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Previously, Professor Davidson practiced commercial real estate at Latham & Watkins LLP, working on corporate mergers and acquisitions, private equity real estate, and international project finance, as well as large-scale development, land-use, and planning projects, with a focus on affordable multifamily housing investment, syndication, development, and compliance. He twice served at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, first as special counsel and later as principal deputy general counsel. Davidson also spent six years on the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency and most recently chaired the New York City Rent Guidelines Board.

Professor Davidson comes to the GSD from Fordham Law School, where he was the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law and founded the Urban Law Center. After earning his AB from Harvard College and JD from Columbia Law School, he clerked for Judge David S. Tatel on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice David H. Souter on the US Supreme Court.