Homeschooling Heroes: Jedediah Purdy

by Christina Yeager

Jedediah S. Purdy spent his childhood gathering nuts and sticks in the immense countryside of Virginia while being homeschooled until his high school years. His college years are invariably where he truly flourished and collected active interest in law and politics. With stints at Harvard Law, Yale Law among other ivy league schools, you can imagine what he’s accomplished!

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“My favorite thing to do was wander through the woods and fill up my pockets and little bags with nuts and rocks and sticks. We have boxes and boxes in our attic just labeled 'Jed’s Nature Stuff.' I loved fossils. I’d go through our driveway gravel looking for shell fragments. I collected feathers, mosses, and big buckets of frogs’ eggs from the pond and creek.”
--Jedediah Purdy

​Homeschooling life and beyond
Jedediah was born in 1974 in the isolated unincorporated community of Chloe, West Virginia, to Wally and Deirdre Purdy. Jed’s mother was a lawyer with a highly educated background. He was homeschooled throughout his entire grade school life until high school. Jed subsequently chose the attend public school at the age of thirteen until graduation.
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“Outside I was a happy high school student, but inside, I felt hollow.”
--Jedediah Purdy

Mr. Purdy attended and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, and Yale Law School. He also took positions as Assistant Professor of Law and Professor of Law at Duke University as well as served as Law Clerk in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

“It is easiest to call them homeschoolers. Really, though, our parents did something more radical. They freed us to learn. The future.”
--Jedediah Purdy

Accomplishments galore!
It’s inevitable with the considerable amount of education Jed Purdy has under his belt that his notable achievements would be great. And they are!
 
The key areas in which Jedediah’s expertise range are:

• Constitutional Law
• Environmental Law
• Legal Theory
• Property
• Social and Political Thought

Professor Purdy has produced his share of publications over the years:

• “The Politics of Nature: Environmental Law, Democracy, and Climate Change” via Yale Law Journal in 2010
• “Introduction: Law and Neoliberalism” (with David Singh Grewal) via Law and Contemporary Problems in 2015
• “Property in American Constitutional Law” via Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution in 2015
• “Wealth and Democracy” via Nomos in 2015
• “Overcoming the Great Forgetting” via Texas Law Review in 2016
• “Inequality Rediscovered” (with David Singh Grewal) via Theoretical Inquiries in Law in 2017
• “Trump’s Nativism Is Transforming the Physical Landscape” via The Atlantic in 2018
• “The Left’s Guide to Reclaiming the Constitution” via The New York Times in 2018
• “The Long Environmental Justice Movement” via Ecology Law Quarterly in 2018

Published books that Jed has authored are:

• For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today published by Knopf in 1999
• Being America: Liberty, Commerce and Violence in an American World published by Knopf in 2003
• Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Life of American Democracy published by Yale University Press in 2004
• A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom published by Knopf in 2009
• The Meaning of Property: Freedom, Community, and the Legal Imagination published by Yale University Press in 2010
• After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene published by Harvard University Press in 2015

​Here are a few other activities on Mr. Purdy’s ‘busy’ list:

• Co-founder of the Law & Political Economy (LPE) blog and LPE Initiative (a Hewlett Foundation project)
• Co-founder of Facing the Anthropocene (a Luce Foundation Project)
• Contributing Editor of The American Prospect
• Editorial Board Member of Dissent
• Reviewer at Yale University Press
• Reviewer at Harvard University Press
• A few of the professor's professional experiences:
• Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law between 2009 and 2018
• Associate Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law between 2007 and 2009
• Assistant Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law between 2004 and 2007
• Law Clerk to Judge Pierre N. Leval with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals between 2002 and 2003

As you can see, Professor Jedediah Purdy has performed astonishing feats in his forty-five years of life so far. This extensive list will undoubtedly grow!

​What’s Jed doing currently?
Jed Purdy previously occupied a position of Professor at Duke University for fourteen successful years and before that, he taught as a visiting professor at Yale Law, Harvard Law, Stanford Law, The University of Virginia of Law and Georgetown University Law.

Leaving an impressive trail behind him, he has moved on to Columbia Law School as of January 2019. Jed will be teaching and writing on constitutional, environmental, property law, legal theory and law’s intersection with social and political thought respectively.

Godspeed Professor Jedediah Purdy!
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