In Memoriam: Victor Schwartz
ALI life member Victor E. Schwartz passed away this week. A long-time and incredibly engaged member of the Institute. Victor was currently serving as an Adviser on Restatement Third of Torts: Remedies, as well as on the Members Consultative Group for our projects on Conflict of Laws, Corporate Governance, Property, and Torts: Defamation and Privacy. Schwartz served in these roles on numerous completed projects as an elected and life member.
His contributions to the Institute spanned decades and left an indelible mark on our work. Victor will be remembered not only for his brilliance, but for the warmth and humility he brought to every conversation. His deep commitment to the Institute’s mission was evident in both his thoughtful engagement and his generosity of spirit.
From Shook Hardy Chairwoman Madeleine McDonough:
It is with a heavy heart that we share with you that our longtime partner, colleague and dear friend Victor Schwartz passed away last night.
Victor founded and co-chaired our Public Policy Group from our DC office. He was with our firm for more than twenty-four years. He took pride in connecting with everyone he came across at the firm. He was warm, generous and funny, and once you met Victor, you never forgot him. He will be missed by all of us.
Victor was an intellectual giant. He spent his career as a leading thought leader, scholar and advocate for civil justice reform. His impact on the legal profession cannot be overstated. In 2013, The National Law Journal named Victor one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.
He began his career as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, following a judicial clerkship in the Southern District of New York and graduation near the top of his class at Columbia Law School. He co-authored Prosser, Wade and Schwartz’s Torts, the most widely used torts casebook in the U.S. to this day. One of his many nicknames was “Schwartz on Torts.”
Victor was a visionary and one of the most creative and innovative lawyers one could meet. He wrote the leading treatise Comparative Negligence, discussing the now widely adopted principle that was in its infancy at the time the first edition was published. His scholarship and effectiveness led him to be named Dean of the law school. In 2012, the law school established the Professor Victor E. Schwartz Chair in Tort Law.
In the 1970s, the federal government formed an interagency task force in the Department of Commerce that Victor chaired to study product liability. That work culminated in the publication of the model Uniform Products Liability Act. Victor received the Secretary of Commerce’s Award for Professional Excellence.
He subsequently joined private practice as a partner in a Washington, DC-based law firm before coming to Shook in summer of 2001. He was a life member of The American Law Institute.