Jedediah S. Purdy is a professor of law at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 and the author of two widely-discussed books: For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (1999) and Being America: Liberty, Commerce and Violence in an American World (2003). More recently the author of The Meaning of Property: Freedom, Community and the Legal Imagination (2010) and A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom (2009).

He was home schooled in West Virginia until high school and is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy

Phillips Exeter Academy

Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...

, Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 (where he was a Truman Scholar

Truman Scholarship

The Harry S. Truman Scholarship is a highly competitive federal scholarship granted to U.S. college juniors for demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service. The scholarship is in the amount of $30,000 toward a graduate education...

 and a member of the Class of 1997), and Yale Law School

Yale Law School

Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 (Class of 2001). After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Pierre N. Leval

Pierre N. Leval

Pierre Nelson Leval is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, he was a United States District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York....

 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...

, in New York. He also serves on the editorial advisory board of the Ethics & International Affairs

Ethics & International Affairs (journal)

Ethics & International Affairs is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering international relations that is published by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. It was established in 1987. Topics covered in the journal range from global justice, democratization, international law,...

.

He is the son of Wally and Deirdre Purdy.

External links

• New York Times Magazine profile, "Against Irony" by Marshall Sella, September 5, 1999.
• Liberal Empire: Assessing the Arguments by Jedediah Purdy
• Washington Post profile, "A Super-Scholar, All Grown Up and Still Theorizing", April 10, 2006.
• Famed McSweeney's parody, "Jedediah in Love", by Todd Pruzan, October 12, 1999.