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AALS TORTS AND COMPENSATION SYSTEMS SECTION 
WILLIAM L. PROSSER AWARD BESTOWED UPON 

GUIDO CALABRESI 

Catherine M. Sharkey∗ 

The William L. Prosser award recognizes “outstanding contributions 
of law teachers in scholarship, teaching and service in . . . torts and com-
pensation systems.”  When Wex Malone bestowed the first Prosser Award 
upon Leon Green in 1974, he said it was “designed to recognize a lifetime 
of truly outstanding contribution to the world of torts.”  Subsequently, 
Fleming James, Wex Malone, Page Keeton, John Wade, and Willard Ped-
rick received the Prosser Award.  Revived in 2008, recent recipients include 
Robert Rabin (2008), Dan Dobbs (2009), and Oscar Gray (2010). 

It is my great honor and pleasure to present the 2011 Prosser Award to 
Guido Calabresi.  Judge Calabresi was appointed to the U.S. Court of Ap-
peals for the Second Circuit in 1994.  Before that, he was Dean and Sterling 
Professor at Yale Law School, where he began teaching in 1959.  He is now 
Sterling Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale. 

Guido Calabresi was a pioneer in the economic analysis of law.  His 
path-breaking 1970 book, The Cost of Accidents,1 was followed by three 
more books and over one hundred law review articles, including the vener-
ated “Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One View of the 
Cathedral.”2  He is also a revered teacher and mentor. 

Indeed, at the ripe age of twenty-four when I entered Yale Law 
School, I thought it a form of “cosmic injustice” that I was not assigned 
Calabresi for Torts, as his work was largely responsible for my budding 
interest in law and economics.  Higher forces aligned in time, as I was giv-
en the honor to serve as one of his law clerks from 1997-1998.  Even during 
that term alone, Judge Calabresi continued to transform the Torts landscape, 
with cases such as Zuchowicz v. United States3 and Liriano v. Hobart 
Corp.,4 now having entered the canon. 

Judge Calabresi has been awarded some forty honorary degrees from 
universities in the United States and abroad.  But the bestowal of the 
Prosser Award is especially meaningful, as his remarks that follow make 
abundantly clear. 

                                                                                                                 
 
 ∗  Professor of Law, New York University School of Law.  Chair, AALS Torts and 
Compensation Systems Section, 2010-11.  Law clerk to the Hon. Guido Calabresi, 1997-98. 
 1. GUIDO CALABRESI, THE COST OF ACCIDENTS: A LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS 
(1970). 
 2. Guido Calabresi & A. Douglas Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inal-
ienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 HARV. L. REV. 1089 (1972). 
 3. Zuchowicz v. United States, 140 F.3d 381 (2d Cir. 1998). 
 4. Liriano v. Hobart Corp., 132 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 1998).