Microsoft Word - 1-Masthead - Vol. VIII.doc


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Guido Calabresi 
 

Dear Friends, 
 
As Cathy will explain, it is not possible for me to be with you today.  I 

did want, however, to tell you how much receiving the Prosser Award 
means to me.  It makes me happy in a way no other award can. 

From the very beginning in the fall of 1959, torts has been my field.  I 
have taught it every single year, either at Yale or when I have visited at Co-
lumbia, Harvard, the University of Cambridge, etc.  And every year I have 
learned something new, from my students and from teaching them this 
wonderful subject.  It never grows stale; it always gets deeper. 

I first fell in love with the subject fifty-five years ago in Fleming 
James’s torts class.  Jimmy James was a great torts teacher, and all the other 
greats of the time: Gregory, Seavey―and Prosser foremost among 
them―were part of the conversation almost every day.  But there was also 
something else in the background which Jimmy did not fully appreciate 
himself. 

The materials he used―what became the Shulman & James Case-
book―had originally been put together by Shulman and Walton Hamilton.  
Jimmy James was not an economist, in any way, and Shulman not much 
more.  But Walton Hamilton certainly was.  And, lurking in the materials 
were all sorts of questions that, as I’ve recently learned, Hamilton put in, 
questions which invited an economist’s analysis that Hamilton, who left 
torts very early for antitrust, never made. 

That interplay between Hamilton’s and James’s visions of torts, be-
tween economics and everything else torts is concerned with, was made to 
order for me fifty-five years ago.  It still is. I was fascinated then, and con-
tinue to be to this day.  The Prosser Award that you have given me will spur 
me on to write more and continue to teach about the very special role that 
torts has in legal systems like ours.  



334 INDIANA HEALTH LAW REVIEW [Vol. 8:2 
 

To join the extraordinarily wonderful, dear friends all, previous recipi-
ents in sharing Prosser’s name, makes me glow with delight.  To receive 
this Award from you, dear friends, makes the pleasure even greater.  

 
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 
 
 
The Honorable Guido Calabresi 
U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit