Dayoung Jeong’s 2026 fellowship at the Robbins Collection Research Center marked a welcome return to UC Berkeley, where she previously served as a visiting scholar in 2024. An associate professor at Chungnam National University Law School in South Korea, Jeong brings a rich, multilayered perspective to private law. Her current research addresses what she calls the “relational allocation of value,” asking how law should “understand value generated over time within long-term cooperative relationships.” This question arises when nonfinancial contributions, such as caregiving or career sacrifices, enhance or preserve an asset formally owned by one party, creating complex challenges when that relationship dissolves.
Before entering academia full-time in 2016, Jeong established a diverse legal career spanning public-sector service—including deputy director positions at South Korea’s Ministry of Government Legislation and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration—as well as corporate legal practice. This background continues to enrich her academic work, instilling a deep awareness of private law as a living legal order shaped by real-world institutions, administrative procedures, and active dispute resolution.
At the heart of Jeong’s fellowship research is a compelling exploration of marital property law, approached not as an isolated subfield, but as a revealing lens for broader concepts across property, contracts, and equity. As entry into marriage increasingly occurs after individuals establish independent careers, contemporary legal systems face the delicate challenge of balancing individual autonomy with economic fairness when a relationship ends.
Beneath the practical question of asset distribution lies a deeper theoretical distinction between formal ownership and value formation. Drawing on French and German civil-law sources alongside Anglo-American equitable traditions, Jeong explores how nonfinancial contributions function as genuine conditions of value creation. As Jeong emphasizes, “formal ownership cannot simply be ignored,” but the law must still find coherent ways to “preserve the stability of title while still recognizing value formed through relational contribution.”
The serene and focused setting of the Robbins Collection Research Center offered an ideal environment for this conceptual synthesis. Reviewing specialized materials on marital property arrangements, rules on financial compensation, patrimonial categorization, and the roots of family property law, Jeong particularly valued the Center’s quiet, reflective atmosphere—a space that facilitated deliberate reading, rigorous analysis, and a broader historical contextualization of property, obligation, and community.
Looking ahead, Jeong is preparing an English-language article to introduce this comparative framework to international audiences. In future stages of research, she aims to examine whether this relational allocation model can offer insights into other cooperative contexts, such as commercial joint ventures, digital platform structures, and emerging interactions between humans and artificial intelligence systems.
Expressing her gratitude to Professor Mayali and the Robbins Center staff, Jeong hopes this Spotlight article will help her connect with scholars across legal disciplines, adding that she “would be especially glad to be in conversation with scholars interested in how law allocates value formed through long-term relationships.”