Summary: William & Mary Law School awarded Yale professor Roberta Romano with the Marshall-Wythe Medallion during a celebratory dinner.
William & Mary Law School awards someone every year with the Marshall-Wythe Medallion, the highest honor given by the law school. This year’s winner of the award was Yale professor, Roberta Romano. The award honors those who demonstrate exceptional accomplishment in law. Romano is the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and director of their Center for the Study of Corporate Law.
Previous recipients include “Judge Guido Calabresi, Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler, Judge Richard A. Posner, attorney Lloyd Cutler and numerous associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, among them William J. Brennan, Jr., Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens,” according to a report from William & Mary Law School.
W&M Law Dean Davison M. Douglas read some of the notes during the dinner at their historic Wren building that her fellow scholars had written about her stature and contributions. One faculty member said she “has done truly path-breaking work in corporate law with sweeping policy implications. Perhaps her signal contribution was to raise serious doubts about Professor Carey’s hypothesized ‘race to the bottom’ among states. .. It is no exaggeration to say that her writings on this critical topic have to a large extent disrupted and reshaped the debate on state competition for incorporation business.”
Another faculty member called her “one of her generation’s leading voices in corporate and securities law” and “deftly combines empirical evidence and compelling arguments in numerous widely cited books and articles.”
A third member wrote that she is “one of the most consistently thoughtful and insightful scholars of corporate law today. The role of jurisdictional competition and the market for law are some of the most central questions in the field, and it’s safe to say that Professor Romano’s work defines the scope of the debate in this area of law.”
The Marshall-Wythe Medallion is named in part after George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson’s mentor. Wythe was also one of the leading statesmen of the Revolutionary Era and was the first professor of law in the country and at W&M. The other namesake, John Marshall was one of Wythe’s first students at W&M. He went on to be the fourth chief justice in the nation, having a pivotal impact on American history.
Which scholarly law awards do you think are the more prestigious? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
To learn more about the honors and awards given to other law professors, read these articles:
- Harvard Law Professor Awarded Holberg Prize
- Jesse Choper, UC Berkeley Law Professor, Awarded Bernard E. Witkin Medal
- Five Professors Receive Endowments at Washburn University School of Law
Photo: law.wm.edu