Jedediah Purdy

Raphael Lemkin Distinguished Professor of Law

School of Law

purdy@law.duke.edu

Duke Law School Room 4178, Duke Box 90362, Durham, NC 27708

Duke Law School 210 Science Dr, Duke Box 90362, Durham, NC 27708

More About This Person

At a Glance

Credentials
1. Education

Academic Experience
1. Current Appointments & Affiliations
2. Previous Appointments & Affiliations

Expertise
1. Global Scholarship

Research
1. Selected Grants

Publications
1. Selected Publications

Artistic Works / Events

Teaching
1. Recent Courses

Advising & Mentoring

Recognition
1. In the News

Professional Activities
1. Outreach & Engaged Scholarship

Selected Publications

We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong

Other The Atlantic · 2024 Cite

Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope

Other Dissent · 2024 Link to item Cite

Walden

Book · 2023 Link to item Cite

The Courts Should Be More Political, Not Less

Other New York Times · 2023 Cite

The Possible Futures of American Democracy

Journal Article Utah Law Review · 2023 Link to item Cite

Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening―and Our Best Hope

Book · 2022 Link to item Cite

The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy

Other New York Times · 2022 Link to item Cite

Democrats Need Patriotism Now More Than Ever

Other New York Times · 2022 Link to item Cite

The Promise of American Life

Journal Article The New Republic · 2022 Cite

Democrats Need Patriotism Now More Than Ever

Other New York Times · 2022 Cite

Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening—and Our Best Hope

Book · 2022 Link to item Cite

We Can Be Framers Too

Other The Atlantic · 2022 Cite

The Constitutional Flaw That’s Killing American Democracy

Other The Atlantic · 2022 Cite

Who Are the People?

Journal Article Dissent · 2022 Link to item Cite

Humans Have Rapidly Remade the Earth and Imperiled Its Future

A Possible Majority

Journal Article Dissent · 2021 Link to item Cite

Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis

Journal Article Yale Law Journal · 2020 Link to item Cite

After Carbon Democracy

Journal Article Dissent · 2020 Link to item Cite

We Need an Insurgent Mass Movement

Journal Article Dissent · 2020 Link to item Cite

Deep Problems

Journal Article Dissent · 2020 Link to item Cite

Solidarity and Crisis

Journal Article Dissent · 2020 Link to item Cite

This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth

Book · 2019 Link to item Cite

All-Too Human: Orienting Environmental Law in a Remade World

Chapter · 2019 Cite

Just in Theory

Journal Article The New Republic · 2019 Cite

Infinite Frontier: The Eternal Return of American Expansionism

Other Nation · 2019 Cite

A Shared Place: Wendell Berry’s Lifelong Dissent

Other Nation · 2019 Cite

Free Time

Other New Republic · 2019 Cite

The Long Environmental Justice Movement

Journal Article Ecology Law Quarterly · 2018 Link to item Cite

Environmental Trumpism at Bears Ears

Other Law and Political Economy · 2018 Cite

Whose Lands? Which Public? The Shape of Public-Lands Law and Trump's National Monument Proclamations

Journal Article Ecology Law Quarterly · 2018 Link to item Cite

Trump’s Nativism Is Transforming the Physical Landscape

Other The Atlantic · 2018 Cite

Beyond the Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment and Class Retrenchment

Journal Article Columbia Law Review · 2018 Link to item Cite

The New Socialism Is More American Than You Think (And Also More Radical)

Other Politico Magazine · 2018 Cite

The Left’s Guide to Reclaiming the Constitution

Other New York Times · 2018 Cite

The Bosses’ Constitution: How and Why the First Amendment Became a Weapon for the Right

Other Nation · 2018 Cite

The Unequal Distribution of Catastrophe in North Carolina

Other The New Yorker · 2018 Cite

No Law Without Politics (No Politics Without Law)

Other Law and Political Economy · 2018 Cite

Normcore

Journal Article Dissent · 2018 Link to item Cite

Normcore

Other Dissent · 2018 Cite

Wealth and Democracy

Chapter · 2017 Link to item Cite

Redefining Solidarity

Other Dissent · 2017 Cite

How to Lose a Country: Henry David Thoreau, the Politics of Nature and the Citizenship of Fear

Other ABC Religion & Ethics · 2017 Cite

America's New Opposition

Other New Republic · 2017 Cite

A People's Globalism: Notes Toward a New Left Internationalism

Other Nation · 2017 Cite

North Carolina's Long Moral March and Its Lessons for the Trump Resistance

Other New Yorker · 2017 Cite

Inequality Rediscovered

Journal Article Theoretical Inquiries in Law · 2017 Link to item Cite

The Original Theory of Constitutionalism

Journal Article Yale Law Journal · 2017 Link to item Cite

Paleo Politics

Journal Article · 2017 Cite

A Billionaires’ Republic

Journal Article Nation · 2017 Cite

Citizen Activism and the Courts

Journal Article American Prospect · 2017 Cite

The Fight Ahead

Other Dissent · 2017 Cite

Environmentalism for the Next Economy

Chapter · 2017 Cite

Thoreau: A Radical for All Seasons

Other Nation · 2017 Cite

Coming into the Anthropocene

Journal Article Harvard Law Review · 2016 Link to item Cite

The Bundys and the Irony of American Vigilantism

Other The New Yorker · 2016 Cite

This Land is Our Land

Journal Article Democracy · 2016 Cite

The New Nature

Other Boston Review · 2016 Cite

What is the Constitution For?

Journal Article New Republic · 2016 Cite

Bernie is Not the New Barry -- And That's a Good Thing

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

'Blood and Earth,' by Kevin Bales

Journal Article New York Times · 2016 Cite

Ammon Bundy Stands Down

Other New Yorker · 2016 Cite

Against the Political Grown-Up

Other Dissent · 2016 Cite

Scalia's Contradictory Originalism

Other New Yorker · 2016 Cite

How the 2016 Election Undermines Fukuyama's "End of History" Argument

Other Vox · 2016 Cite

A Wild Way to Save the Planet

Journal Article New Republic · 2016 Cite

The Violent Remaking of Appalachia

Journal Article Atlantic · 2016 Cite

Transgender Rights and the End of the New South

Other New Yorker · 2016 Cite

What West Virginia is Saying at the Polls

Other Scalawag · 2016 Cite

On Memorial Day, Weaponizing the American Flag

Other Scalawag · 2016 Cite

America's Rejection of the Politics of Barack Obama

Other Atlantic · 2016 Cite

A Voting-Rights Victory in North Carolina

Other New Yorker · 2016 Cite

Votes of No Confidence

Journal Article BookForum · 2016 Cite

Red-State Blues

Journal Article · 2016 Cite

North Carolina Republications vs. N.C.A.A. Basketball

Other New Yorker · 2016 Cite

The Art of the Possible: Peter Frase's "Four Futures"

Journal Article LA Review of Books · 2016 Cite

Populism's Two Paths

Other Nation · 2016 Cite

License to Kill

Journal Article Artforum International · 2016 Cite

4 Reasons Sanders Can Win the General

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

How to Fight Trump

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Dismissing Sanders: Democratic Condescension and the Mythic Political Grown-up

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Jim Webb, Donald Trump, and the Tragedy of American Whiteness

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Donald Trump's Brutal Charm

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Sanders and the Theory of Change: Radical Politics for Grown-Ups

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Palin's Song: Her Speech Endorsing Trump, Compressed into Short Poems

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Sandra Bland, Citizen

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

The Pope and I (Are Having a Complicated Weekend)

Other Huffington Post · 2016 Cite

Overcoming the Great Forgetting: A Comment on Fishkin and Forbath

Journal Article Texas Law Review · 2016 Cite

Environmentalism was Once a Social-Justice Movement

Other Atlantic · 2016 Cite

The Two Populisms

Journal Article Nation · 2016 Cite

What Real Difference Does the Gross Domestic Product Make?

Journal Article Cultural Dynamics · 2016 Cite

Wild Again: A Drastic Plan to Save the World from Ecological Ruin

Journal Article The New Republic · 2016 Cite

The Anti-Trump Left Is Now the Only Hope for Moderates

Other The New Republic · 2016 Cite

Obama’s Legacy and Beyond

Journal Article Juncture · 2016 Cite

After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene

Book · 2015 Link to item Cite

Introduction: Law and Neoliberalism

Journal Article Law & Contemporary Problems · 2015 Link to item Cite

Neoliberal Constitutionalism: Lochnerism for a New Economy

Journal Article Law & Contemporary Problems · 2015 Link to item Cite

The Triumph of Corruption

Other Dissent · 2015 Cite

Socialism or Barbarism? Syriza, Economics, and Democracy

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

The Long Game of the Moral March

Other New Yorker · 2015 Cite

Ayn Rand Comes to U.N.C.

Other The New Yorker · 2015 Cite

Imagining the Anthropocene

Other aeon · 2015 Cite

Thoughts from Chapel Hill: Violence as a Way of Life

Other · 2015 Cite

The Dangers of Clarity: Don't Let Terrorism Define Us

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

I Understand Nothing

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

The G.O.P. Opts Out of Equality

Other New Yorker · 2015 Cite

Tenure, Fairness, and Fear(lessness)

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

That We are Underlings: The Real Problems in Disciplining Political Spending and the First Amendment

Journal Article Constitutional Commentary · 2015 Link to item Cite

Environmentalism's Racist History

Other New Yorker · 2015 Cite

Foodies Can Succeed Where Environmentalists Failed

Other Bloomberg View · 2015 Cite

Maybe Connect

Journal Article Los Angeles Review of Books · 2015 Cite

Climate Apocalypse and/or Democracy

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

The Mushroom that Explains the World

Journal Article New Republic · 2015 Cite

Bernie Sanders's New Deal Socialism

Other The New Yorker · 2015 Cite

Property in the United States Constitution

Chapter · 2015 Cite

Trump's Monstrous Call

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

We are the Climate Change Complacency We Seek

Other Foreign Policy · 2015 Cite

An Environmentalism for the Left

Other Dissent · 2015 Cite

The TPP is a Test of Democracy

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

Fragments, Shored

Other Avidly · 2015 Cite

Eternal Childhood of the Spotless Mind: Speech Codes in the Neoliberal University

Other Huffington Post · 2015 Cite

The Accidental Neoliberal

Other N+1 · 2014 Cite

Property and the Constitution

Chapter · 2014 Cite

Time Bomb

Other Politico Magazine · 2014 Cite

Black-Robed Reactionaries: Has the Supreme Court Been Bad for the American Republic?

Journal Article BookForum · 2014 Cite

To Have and Have Not

Journal Article Los Angeles Review of Books · 2014 Cite

Killing It

Other Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal · 2014 Cite

When Diversity Fails the Poor

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Why Some are More Equal Than Others

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

On Obama, Occupy, and Moral Monday

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

God Save Us From This Court

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

How to Fix Inequality After Piketty

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Why Pollution is a Violent Crime

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Time for Greens to Get Radical

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

We Need More Class Traitors

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

How 'Thrones' Explains DC Politics

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

What We Need to Fix Climate Change

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Democracy Under Threat for 250 Years

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Teenage Riot A Sentimental Education

Other n+1 · 2014 Cite

The Hunger Games Economy

Other The Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

A Reminder: Our Justices are Politicians in Robes

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Undo Citizen's United? We'd Only Scratch the Surface

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Why Your Waiter Hates You

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Socialism Coincides with American Values

Chapter · 2014 Cite

No One's Job: West Virginia's Forbidden Waters

Other New Yorker · 2014 Cite

The Media's Pro-Torture Cheerleaders

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

Thanksgiving #Ferguson

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

It's Legal to Buy Votes in America

Other Daily Beast · 2014 Cite

7 Most Truthy NYT Columnists

Other Avidly · 2014 Cite

17 Endangered Species that are Also Bands

Other Avidly · 2014 Cite

A Terrible Beauty

Other Avidly · 2013 Cite

Open the Slaughterhouses

Other New York Times · 2013 Cite

How the Ag-Gag Bill Would Make Criminals Out of Do-Gooders

Other Newsobserver.com · 2013 Cite

Our Place in the World: A New Relationship for Environmental Ethics and Law

Journal Article Duke Law Journal · 2013 Link to item Cite

Some Pluralism About Pluralism: A Comment on Hanoch Dagan's "Pluralism and Perfectionism in Private Law"

Journal Article Columbia Law Review Sidebar · 2013 Link to item Cite

How to be American Here in the Future

Whiteness in the Age of Obama

Nature

Chapter · 2012 Cite

The Liberty of Free Riders: The Minimum Coverage Provision, Mill's 'Harm Principle,' and American Social Morality

Journal Article American Journal of Law & Medicine · 2012 Link to item Cite

American Natures: The Shape of Conflict in Environmental Law

Journal Article Harvard Environmental Law Review · 2012 Link to item Cite

An American sacrifice zone

Chapter · December 1, 2011 Cite

A Foxy Hedgehog: The Consistent Perception of Carol Rose

Journal Article William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal · 2011 Link to item Cite

Afterword: An American Sacrifice Zone

Chapter · 2011 Cite

The Meaning of Property: Freedom, Community and the Legal Imagination

Book · 2010 Link to item Cite

The Politics of Nature: Climate Change, Environmental Law, and Democracy

Journal Article Yale Law Journal · 2010 Link to item Cite

Language of Politics in America

Chapter · 2009 Cite

What Has to Change for Forests to Be Saved? A Historical Example From the United States

Journal Article Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law · 2009 Link to item Cite

A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom

Book · 2009 Link to item Cite

A Few Questions About the Social-Obligation Norm

Journal Article Cornell Law Review · 2009 Link to item Cite

Presidential Popular Constitutionalism

Journal Article Fordham Law Review · 2009 Link to item Cite

Corn Futures: Consumer Politics, Health, and Climate Change

Journal Article Environmental Law Reporter · 2008 Link to item Cite

Climate Change and the Limits of the Possible

Journal Article Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum · 2008 Link to item Cite

The New Biopolitics: Autonomy, Demography and Nationhood

Journal Article Brigham Young University Law Review · 2007 Link to item Cite

Intellectual Climate Change

Other The Guardian · 2007 Cite

People as Resources: Recruitment and Reciprocity in the Freedom-Promoting Approach to Property

Journal Article Duke Law Journal · 2007 Link to item Cite

Property and Empire: The Law of Imperialism in Johnson v. M'Intosh

Journal Article George Washington Law Review · 2007 Link to item Cite

Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts and the Limits of Legitimate State Power

Journal Article Law & Contemporary Problems · 2007 Link to item Cite

History, Human Nature, and Property Regimes: Filling in the Civilizing Argument

Journal Article Saint Louis University Law Journal · 2006 Link to item Cite

The Promise (and Limits) of Neuroeconomics

Journal Article Alabama Law Review · 2006 Link to item Cite

The New Biopolitics

Journal Article Democracy · 2006 Link to item Cite

The New Biopolitics: Autonomy, Demography, and Nationhood

Journal Article Brigham Young University Law Review · 2006 Link to item Cite

The New Open Society: Has The New Utopia Promised By The Tech Boom's Cyber-Prophets Lived Up To Its Billing? Depends On The Book

Other American Prospect · 2006 Cite

The American Transformation of Waste Doctrine: A Pluralist Interpretation

Journal Article Cornell Law Review · 2006 Link to item Cite

The Limits of Courage and Principle

Journal Article Michigan Law Review · 2006 Link to item Cite

The New Liberal Imperialism: Assessing the Arguments

Chapter · 2005 Cite

Democracy and Disaster

Other Die Zeit · 2005 Cite

A Way in the World

Other Duke Law Magazine · 2005 Cite

Neoliberalism Comes to Domestic Policy

Other La Vanguardia · 2005 Cite

Where Do Progressives Go Now?

Other The Principles Project · 2005 Cite

Book Reviews

Journal Article Ethics & International Affairs · 2005 Cite

A Freedom-Promoting Approach to Property: A Renewed Tradition for New Debates

Journal Article University of Chicago Law Review · 2005 Link to item Cite

The Ethics of Empire, Again (Review Essay)

Journal Article California Law Review · 2005 Link to item Cite

A World of Passions: How to Think About Globalization Now

Journal Article Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies · 2004 Link to item Cite

Democrats After the Election

Other Die Welt · 2004 Cite

Voting for John Kerry Guarantees Saving the American Dream

Other Charleston · 2004 Cite

Democratic Conscience, Democratic Sense

Other La Vanguardia · 2004 Cite

Kerrys Dilemma

Other La Vanguardia · 2004 Cite

Questions for President Bush (contributor)

Other New York Times · 2004 Cite

A Vote for Kerry Is a Vote for the American Dream

Other Charleston Gazette · 2004 Cite

American Eating, American Politics

Other Die Zeit · 2004 Cite

Freedom's Next Fight

Other American Prospect · 2004 Cite

Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Life of American Democracy

Book · 2004 Link to item Cite

Introduction

Chapter · 2004 Cite

Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World

Book · 2003 Link to item Cite

Suspicious Minds

Other The Atlantic Monthly · 2003 Cite

Liberal Empire: Assessing the Arguments

Journal Article Ethics and International Affairs · 2003 Link to item Cite

The Values of the Market

Journal Article New America Foundation: Ethics and International Affairs · 2002 Cite