2008 Woodie Awards
Fallon appointed to Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship of Constitutional Law
Lecture about judicially manageable standards is main focus of lecture by Fallon
Adina Levine
Issue date: 2/10/05 Section: News
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"I was just delighted that this was the chair that I got," began Fallon, "A chair that has been previously held by two wonderful people for whom I have enormous admiration, John Ely and Larry Tribe."
Professor Laurence Tribe held the Tyler Chair until last year when he was designated as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor, the "highest academic honor that the university can give to anyone," according to Fallon. Because of the way in which assignment of Chairs is handled, when Tribe gave up his chair, it became available to another Harvard Law faculty member. Through a combination of seniority and merits, Fallon was assigned to the Chair.
"[Professor Fallon is] a wonderful person to get the Tyler chair because of his extraordinary distinction as a constitutional law scholar and teacher," asserted Dean Kagan. "He's also a remarkably fine person who over the years has given of himself to many hundreds of law students."
The conferring of a chair does not entail an increase in salary nor any other "tangible benefit" according to Kagan.
"It's just a way of honoring someone," commented Kagan. "Seniority has something to do with the allocation of chairs; so too does subject matter, [since] some chairs are only for a professor who teaches in a particular area, like constitutional law; so too does excellence in scholarship and teaching."
Fallon has been teaching at Harvard Law for 23 years, since 1982 and has been a Professor of Law since 1987. This year, he taught Constitutional Law in the fall and throughout the year has been co-teaching with Heather Gerken a Public Law Workshop. He regularly teaches a course on federal courts, that he "just happened not to be teaching this year."
"Constitutional law has been at the center of my professional life," asserted Fallon. "Apart from giving the lecture, [Monday] was a very good day, everyone was very kind."
Fallon chose to speak about Judicially Manageable standards because that is the topic that he is in the midst of working on.
"It's what I'm working on right now," explained Fallon about his choice in the topic. "It seems to me that it's the job of people who are lucky enough to be tenured professors to keep on doing scholarship, and it just seemed fitting that if I was getting a chair, to talk about what I'm working on."