Luncheon Speaker
Honorable Guido Calabresi
Prior to Judge Calabresi's remarks, President Rachel Moran will present
the AALS Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Law
to Professor, Dean and Judge Calabresi.*
The Honorable Guido Calabresi, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Sterling Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer, Yale Law School received his B.S. degree, summa cum laude, from Yale College in 1953, a B.A. degree with First Class Honors from Magdalene College, Oxford University, in 1955, an LL.B. degree, magna cum laude, in 1958 from Yale Law School, and an M.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University in 1959. A Rhodes Scholar and member of Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif, Judge Calabresi served as the Note Editor of The Yale Law Journal, 1957-58, while graduating first in his law school class. He began his teaching career at Yale Law School in 1959 and served as Dean from 1985-1994. On February 9, 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Calabresi as circuit judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and he was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 18.
Professor, Dean and Judge Calabresi’s service “to the law” is best exemplified in the body of his scholarship which transformed our profession’s thinking about tort law. Two of his four books earned recognition from the American Bar Association, and one received the Order of the Coif’s Triennial Book Award. The American Bar Foundation honored him with its Award for Outstanding Research in Law and Government. He has received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award and continues his active judicial service after fifteen years as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Calabresi’s service “to legal education” is multi-faceted. It includes nine years as Dean of the Yale Law School, membership during the late 1980s on the AALS Executive Committee, an exceptionally high degree of informal mentoring of law students and graduates over the generations, continued law school teaching despite the demands and satisfactions of his judicial role, willingness to participate in furthering the transition of individuals into law teaching through, for example, his frequent participation in the AALS’s Workshop for New Law School Teachers, and his service to law schools other than his own exemplified in over 70 named lectures and service on advisory boards.
“It is hard to imagine a more deserving winner of this award. Judge Calabresi’s scholarship has been transformative, his teaching and mentoring exceptional, and his generosity to legal education and the profession unparalleled,” says AALS President Rachel F. Moran. “In fact, he is so admired and beloved among colleagues, students, and law clerks that he is affecti