Jedediah Purdy
Professor of Law
Jedediah Purdy graduated from Harvard College, summa cum laude, with an A.B. in Social Studies, and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. He teaches in environmental, property, and constitutional law. He is also interested in American politics and the intersections of law with intellectual history and political theory. He writes about the history and theory of property law, the development and prospects of American political culture, and the legal and cultural challenge of climate change, among other topics.
Purdy clerked for the Honorable Pierre N. Leval of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City and has been a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, an ethics fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He is a fellow at the New America Foundation, an affiliated scholar at the Center for American Progress, and a contributing editor at the American Prospect.
Purdy's scholarship has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, California Law Review, George Washington Law Review, and Fordham Law Review, among others. He is the author of For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (Knopf 1999), Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World (Knopf 2003) and many essays in publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Op-Ed Page and Book Review, The American Prospect, Democracy, and Die Zeit. His book, A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom, will be published by Knopf in 2009. He is also at work on Aspects of Mastery: Property, Freedom, and the Legal Imagination, under contract with Yale University Press.
In 2008-09, Purdy will visit at Yale Law School.