Jerry Chen (he/him) is a J.D./Ph.D. Candidate at Harvard University, interested in U.S. legal history, urban history, and the history of capitalism. Jerry received his B.A. from Columbia University, where he worked on the history of federal judicial response to white supremacist violence during Reconstruction. His dissertation project studies Asian American legal challenges against discriminatory alien land laws in the early 20th century. Going beyond the U.S. Supreme Court cases and drawing on county court documents, probate case files, and legal records of Asian American civic organizations, Jerry seeks writes a new, bottom-up legal history of strategic and everyday alien land litigation led by ordinary Asian Americans, while reconceptualizing alien land laws as a component of the broader Jim Crow property rights regime.