On April 8 in Philadelphia the Institute’s retiring Director, Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., received the American Judicature Society’s 1999 Justice Award for “outstanding contributions to the nation in promoting the effective administration of justice.” This is the text prepared by the Society to accompany the presentation.

Penetrating scholar, skilled draftsman, informed commentator, superb lawyer and effective institutional leader. These are careers for most mortals. These have been merely some of the activities—often pursued at the same time—in the extraordinary career of Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. Rarely in this nation’s history has a single lawyer achieved such eminence in so many roles, and rarely has the administration of justice had such an incisive and knowledgeable champion working for its benefits in so many ways.

To scholars, Professor Hazard is a figure of immense influence in the fields of procedure, federal jurisdiction and the legal profession. His books and articles have shaped the course of doctrine, and hence the administration of justice, in matters ranging from the structure of a lawsuit to the jurisdiction of the court. Here as elsewhere, however, the Professor has refused to cabin his activities within a role, and he has thus brought his formidable intelligence and learning to the business of law reform, seeking solutions for difficult practical problems, whether as Reporter for the Restatement (Second) of Judgments or as a member of the Standing Committee on Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

To lawyers, Professor Hazard is no ordinary professor. He has been instrumental in the redefinition of professional roles and of the rules of professional responsibility appropriate to those roles in his work for the American Bar Association. Both that work and his scholarship on legal ethics make him the expert witness of choice throughout the land. But he has been more than that, leading the bar not from an ivory tower, but as someone sympathetic to, and deeply versed in, the tensions and dilemmas of the practice of law and he is willing to work hard, without blinders, to assist the profession in attaining its highest ideals.

To colleagues fortunate enough to have served with or under Professor Hazard, whether at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania or the American Law Institute, or at many other institutions, he is a model of informed, tough-minded leadership, short on nostalgia, but very long indeed on creative accomplishment, a person whose commitment to facts, to rigorous thinking and to efficiency is both an example and a prod, to others and for the institution.

For contributions to the administration of justice, as a scholar and law reformer, that have continued over a period of forty years and that are breathtaking in their range and influence, the American Judicature Society is proud to recognize Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. with its highest honor.