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Ross Jones JD/MELP’00

Titles

  • Adjunct Faculty

Degrees

  • JD/MELP, Vermont Law School
  • PhD, Northwestern University
  • BS, University of Chicago

Contact

Biography

Ross Jones an Adjunct Professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, where he has developed, revised, and/or taught a range of online courses including Science for Environmental Law, Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law, as well as courses on Climate Change Adaptation and Climate Change Law. In addition, Ross is a Senior Lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department at Dartmouth College, where he teaches Environmental Law and, occasionally, Environmental Science. Ross also advises students and conducts research on the integration of ecology and environmental law, particularly as it relates to biodiversity protection and natural resource management. He is a consultant on a range of environmental projects—ranging from providing scientific and legal expertise for litigation to working with private and public groups on sustainability issues.

Ross grew up in the mountains and deserts of the western United States, where he developed his ties to nature. He moved to Chicago for college (where he majored in biology at the University of Chicago) and graduate school (where he received a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Northwestern University). His dissertation combined fieldwork (in the caves and springs of West Virginia) with laboratory and theoretical work to study the ecological causes of natural selection, along with the interaction of selection with genetic drift, gene flow, and development.

From Chicago, he and his wife moved to Washington, D.C., for two years and then to Newfoundland, Canada, where he spent six years doing work in marine ecology and learning about the ways that science, culture, law, and economics can interact to cause and cure real-world problems. This new perspective was motivated by the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery: an environmental, economic, and cultural disaster. It was this event that led him to back to the U.S. to attend law school–where he received a joint JD/Master’s from Vermont Law School–with the goal of combining science and law in ways that will better protect human and non-human populations and the ecosystems on which they depend.

Curriculum Vitae

Expertise

  • Environmental Law
  • Natural Resources Law and Management
  • Science and the Law

Departments

  • Environmental Law Center
  • New Economy Law Center

Courses Taught

  • Ecology
  • Environmental Law
  • Natural Resources Law
  • Science for Environmental Law