Professor Benjamin Zipursky, James H. Quinn ’49 Chair in Legal Ethics, will receive this year’s William L. Prosser Award from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Torts & Compensation Systems. The award recognizes the significant contributions of law teachers in scholarship, teaching, and service in the torts and compensation systems of law.
“William Prosser dominated the field of American tort law for much of the twentieth century and was pivotal in the development of products liability law and privacy law,” said Zipursky. “To win an award in his name—and an award previously given to giants like Hon. Richard Posner and Hon. Jack Weinstein—leaves me speechless.”
For the first time, the award will be presented to two people: Zipursky and Harvard Law School Professor John C.P. Goldberg. The two pioneered Civil Recourse Theory in tort theory in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and have been listed as the most cited torts professors in the United States. Their book Recognizing Wrongs (Harvard University Press 2020) has been widely acclaimed and has generated Law and Philosophy symposia on three continents, and their casebook, Tort Law: Responsibilities and Redress (Aspen 2021) (5th ed.) (with L. Kendrick & A. Sebok), has been used in law schools across the country over the past two decades. Zipursky serves as an Advisor to the American Law Institute on the Restatement (Third) of the Law of Torts and the Restatement (Fourth) on the Law of Property.
“I feel especially gratified to have won [the Prosser Award]alongside my dear friend and longtime collaborator, John Goldberg,” said Zipursky. “John and I began talking about torts together 34 years ago, as study partners in our first week of law school.”
Zipursky joined Fordham Law School in 1995, and he has twice served as its Associate Dean. A former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Columbia, and Vanderbilt Law Schools, Zipursky has published over 100 articles, essays, and chapters in traditional and online media. His writings on tort law, defamation, legal ethics, and jurisprudence have appeared in many venues, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Washington Post.
Zipursky and Goldberg will be presented with the award at the annual AALS meeting in San Diego, California, on January 5, 2023.
Read more: “The Big Idea: Torts are Wrongs”
