On Nov. 14, Jane Stapleton of Christ’s College at Cambridge University accepted the honor and delivered the 2018 John G. Fleming Lecture at UC Berkley School of Law on the topic “Striking Contrasts: Tort Law in the US and the UK.”
John G. Fleming was the leading comparative tort law scholar of his generation. His famous treatise, Fleming’s The Law of Torts, brings together the work of leading torts scholars from the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. to illustrate the principles of tort law. After his death, the Fleming Prize was established. The prize has now been awarded to some of the most respected torts scholars in the world.
Previous Fleming Prize winners include ALI members Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Michael D. Green of Wake Forest University School of Law, Lewis N. Klar Q.C. of the University of Alberta, Helmut Koziol of the European Center on Tort and Insurance Law, Basil Markesinis of University College London, William C. Powers Jr. of University of Texas at Austin, and Robert L. Rabin of Stanford Law School.
Professor Jane Stapleton currently serves as the Master of Christ’s College at Cambridge University. A native Australian, she began her academic career as a scientist, earning her Ph.D. from the University from Adelaide. She went on to obtain her law degree from the Australian National University and then a doctorate in law from Oxford University. She is the only non-U.S. recipient of two very distinguished awards – the Prosser Prize in Torts from the Association of American Law Schools and the Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award from the American Bar Association. A major focus of Professor Stapleton’s scholarship in the last ten years has been on causation in law, philosophy and science. She has acted as a consultant in commercial, pharmaceutical, medical, and environmental litigation in the U.S. and U.K.
Learn more about the Fleming Lecture here.