Dedication: Edmund O. Belsheim.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Huffman, James L.
• Date: 01 January 1995

During his remarkable career as a law professor, Edmund O. Belsheim taught nearly every basic course in the curriculum. He was a common law lawyer in the Holmes tradition and more. Though educated when the common law dominated the curriculum, Ed practiced and taught through the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the Great Society, the Reagan years, and nearly to the end of the 20th Century. Along the way he brought the growing wisdom of age to his teaching about law and a legal system that little resembled what he had studied as a youth. He also brought the timeless virtues of compassion, friendship, and an expectation of excellence.

Environmental law is one of the few legal subjects of which Ed Belsheim knew little. Environmental law, like this law review, was born about the time Ed Belsheim retired from the University of Nebraska Over the next quarter century, both environmental law and Ed Belsheim would play central roles in lifting this law school from threatened survival to national prominence and leadership.

That Ed knew little of the subject matter of environmental law did not limit his understanding of its importance. While some "old timers" grumbled that environmental law was...