John Peck is a native Kansan and graduated from Kansas State University in 1968 with a degree in civil engineering. After working three years for the US Public Health Service and the EPA in Washington, DC, he earned his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1974. Peck practiced law in Manhattan, Kansas from 1974 to 1978 and joined the KU Law Faculty in 1978. He taught contracts, land transactions, water law, and family law. Peck is a nationally recognized authority on Kansas water law. After forty-one years of teaching at KU, he retired in 2019.