2007 Henry M. Phillips Prize

Spring General Meeting
Cass R. Sunstein

The 2007 recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is awarded to Cass R. Sunstein. The prize citation reads, "In recognition of his intellectual leadership in Constitutional Law and Political Science, including in particular his profound research and writing demonstrating the complex interplay between jurisprudential constructs and the day by day resolution of legal conflicts." In a recent illustrative article, he demonstrates how judges who embraced the judicial philosophy known as legal realism applied that philosophy in their review of day by day rule making by administrative agencies under the so-called Chevron doctrine.

Cass R. Sunstein is the Karl N. Lllewellyn Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Harvard College and its Law School, magna cum laude. He is the author of more than 25 books and of an impressively large number of articles and essays. His books include After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory State (1990), Constitutional Law, with Geoffrey Stone, Louis M. Seidman, and Mark Tushnet (1995), The Partial Constitution (1993), Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (1993), Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996), Free Markets and Social Justice (1997), Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy, with Justice Stephen Breyer, Professor Richard Stewart and Matthew Spitzer (1998), One Case At A Time (1999), Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do (2001), Republic.com (2001), Risk and Reason (2002), The Cost-Benefit State (2002), Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), The Second Bill of Rights (2004), and Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005).

The Henry M. Phillips Prize recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence and the important publications which illustrate that accomplishment. It was established in 1888 by a gift from his sister to be used as an award to honor "real merit on the science and philosophy of jurisprudence."

The selection committee consisted of chairman Ellen Ash Peters, Judge Trial Referee and former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court; Guido Calabresi, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former Dean of Yale University Law School; William T. Coleman, Jr., Senior Partner & The Senior Counselor at O'Melveny & Myers; Herma Hill Kay, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; and Louis H. Pollak, Judge of the United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania.