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by Tanner O’Neal Riley
For Walls Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Law Taylor Gamm, the path to the classroom began with a lifelong curiosity about how rules and systems shape everyday life.
Gamm earned her undergraduate degree in economics from Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, where she also played and later captained the university’s women’s soccer team. She went on to earn her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, graduating summa cum laude and second in her class. During law school, she served as Notes and Comments Editor for the University of Cincinnati Law Review and received book awards in property, contracts, ethics, and lawyering.
After graduation, Gamm clerked for Judge Michael J. Newman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She later practiced complex commercial litigation at Barrasso Usdin in New Orleans, focusing on environmental contamination, toxic tort, and products liability. Gamm went on to serve as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, where she litigated cases under the Fifth Amendment’s taking clause and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Now serving as Mizzou Law’s first environmental law professor in more than a decade, Gamm brings her practical experience to the classroom.
“The law is rarely black and white,” she said. “Environmental law in particular requires balancing competing interests, scientific uncertainty, and real-world impact. I want students to see how those complexities make the law both challenging and rewarding.”
Gamm said her goal is to help students understand how environmental issues intersect with nearly every area of legal practice.
“Whether you go into litigation, corporate work, or policy, environmental law affects your clients and your community,” she said. “My hope is that students leave my class seeing how the law connects directly to the world around them.”