As Nebraska's land-grant university, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln places great emphasis on answering and addressing the issues that affect the wellbeing and livelihoods of the state's rural residents. UNL programs assist with rural economic development, mental and physical wellbeing, agricultural innovation, small-business and entrepreneurial development, opportunities for rural youth and many other issues. (Updated November 2024.)
Bio
Jessica Shoemaker has been recognized nationally and internationally for her expertise on pluralistic land-tenure systems and property law's power to shape human communities and natural environments. She focuses specifically on racial justice and agricultural sustainability in the American countryside and on systems of indigenous land tenure and land governance in the United States and Canada. In 2021, Shoemaker was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to analyze how property law shapes ownership of agricultural land in America. Before becoming a legal scholar, Shoemaker worked as an agricultural writer, a VISTA volunteer, a rural community outreach worker and a public-interest attorney for diverse, smallholder farmers as a Skadden Fellow with Farmers' Legal Action Group, Inc. (Updated November 2024.)
Bio
Anthony Schutz is a 2003 graduate of the College of Law and joined the faculty in 2006. During law school, he worked for Cline, Williams, Wright, Johnson and Oldfather in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was the editor-in-chief of the Nebraska Law Review. After law school, Schutz clerked for 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge C. Arlen Beam. He has taught legal research and writing and was a visiting lecturer in the Lawyering Program at the Cornell Law School. The product of a farm family in Elwood, Nebraska, Schutz's research interests include the often-intertwined subjects of agricultural law, environmental and natural resources law and state and local government. He has served as the chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Agricultural Law, is active in the American Agricultural Law Association, and is a frequent lecturer on agricultural and water law issues. (Updated November 2024.)