University of Texas at Austin President William Powers Jr. has, along with coauthor Mike Green, been awarded the John G. Fleming Memorial Prize for Torts Scholarship. The Fleming Prize is awarded every other year to an outstanding tort law scholar. Powers, a former dean of the Law School, and Green received the prize for, among other things, their “outstanding work as American Law Institute co-reporters for two core portions of the Restatement (Third) of Torts.” Powers and Green jointly delivered the second Fleming Lecture at Berkeley Law at the University of California, Berkeley, on November 5, 2012.
Law School Dean Ward Farnsworth lauded the selection of Powers for the Fleming Prize. “Bill is a major figure in modern American torts scholarship, and the Restatement that he coauthored with Mike Green is one of the major achievements in that field in the past generation,” Farnsworth said. “It’s great to see him getting much-deserved recognition with this very prestigious prize.”
Powers served as dean of the Law School from 2000 until 2006, when he accepted his current position as president of the University of Texas at Austin. Despite the change in office, Powers continues to publish in his academic discipline and serves as University Distinguished Teaching Professor Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law at the Law School. He has written several important legal texts, including Cases and Materials in Products Liability, Cases and Materials in Torts, and Texas Products Liability Law.
Berkeley Law Professor John Fleming was among the world’s leading comparative tort law scholars and long-time editor in chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law. When he passed away in 1998, two books were published in his honor and proceeds were used to create the Fleming Prize, which is awarded every other year to a tort law scholar from any country. The Fleming family later endowed the Fleming Lecture. Bob Rabin of Stanford Law Schoo, the previous winner of the prize, delivered the first Fleming Lecture.
Related Link: “Powers Wins Prestigious Fleming Award for Legal Scholarship” in The Alcalde