Powers Wins Prestigious Fleming Award for Legal Scholarship

By Andrew Roush in Promote & Protect, Special on November 2, 2012 at 1:53 pm | 1 Comment

Bill Powers is being awarded for his work in tort law with one of the field’s most prestigious prizes.

UT president Bill Powers is the 2012 co-recipient of the prestigious John G. Fleming Memorial Prize for Torts Scholarship.

Powers, former dean of UT Law, won the joint award for a large body of work, including his Restatement Third, Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm, written with Wake Forest professor Michael D. Green for the American Law Institute.

The award comes just weeks after Powers was elected vice-chair of the Association of American Universities, a group of the most respected research universities in the U.S. and Canada.

While some may not know about the president’s success as a legal scholar, current law school dean Ward Farnsworth described Powers as a “major figure in modern American torts scholarship.” Calling Restatement one of the most important works in the field, which includes law relating to personal injury and emotional damages, Farnsworth touted Powers as a worthy recipient. “It’s great to see him getting much-deserved recognition with this very prestigious prize.”

While Powers’ legal training was most recently and publicly on display during the Supreme Court’s Fisher v. University of Texas deliberations, Powers continues to write and publish legal works. He is also a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, as well as the Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law at the School of Law.

The prize is named for John Fleming, a prominent legal professor at Berkeley, journal editor, and respected tort expert. Proceeds from two books published posthumously were used to establish the prize.

Powers and Green join only five others who won the biennial award in its first 10 years. They will jointly deliver the Fleming Lecture together at the University of California-Berkeley Law on Monday, November 5.

Tags: American Law Institute, award, Berkeley, bill powers, Fisher v. Texas, John Fleming, law school dean, lecture, Michael D. Green, supreme court, tort law, ut president