Meet Jerry Long
Jerrold Long (Jerry) joined the faculty at the College of Law in 2007. He teaches Property, Land Use, Environmental Law, and related courses. Professor Long is also an Affiliate Professor in two of the University of Idaho’s interdisciplinary programs—Water Resources, and Bioregional Planning and Community Design.
Professor Long grew up in the Idaho, and despite a brief Wisconsin detour, his academic interests focus on how law, culture, and landscape interact in the American West. His primary interest is in exploring how individuals and communities go about negotiating “place”—the constantly evolving tapestry of law, culture, landscape, and meaning. This is, of course, an excuse to visit beautiful places and talk to interesting people. He approaches these issues both in theory and in practice, writing scholarly works as well as engaging with real communities on the ground. For example, over the last few years, Professor Long has worked with a local community to determine how an existing conservation regime might be used to facilitate stream restoration and preservation efforts.
Prior to joining the College of Law, Professor Long attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was an instructor, Distinguished Graduate Fellow, and had earned a doctorate degree from the interdisciplinary Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Professor Long’s dissertation–New West or Same West? Evolving land-use institutions in the American West–explored how local land-use regimes respond to social and cultural change. Before returning to his education, Professor Long practiced law in the Cheyenne office of the western regional law firm Holland & Hart LLP, where his practice focused on environmental compliance and litigation before the U.S. Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals.
At the University of Idaho College of Law, Professor Long has worked with his colleagues Dale Goble and Barbara Cosens to develop the Natural Resources and Environmental Law (NREL) emphasis, the College’s first effort to provide students focused study and training in an area of law that is an integral part of life in the American West. This program continues to grow, and in 2014, Professor Long will lead the program’s first NREL Field Course. Based out of the University’s McCall field campus, the course will take students to the places where law happens on the ground, introduce them to the people who must implement and follow the law, and connect them directly with the resources affected by our legal system.
Outside the College, Professor Long serves on three community boards, volunteers at his sons’ school (admittedly, only on “Adventure Friday”), and rides his bike a bit more than is reasonable. Despite growing up in a place with “real” mountains, Professor Long has come to appreciate the Palouse, claiming on occasion that it is the most beautiful human landscape anywhere. The fact that he can easily access dozens of miles of singletrack trail from his front door doesn’t hurt.
