In February, the American Law Institute conferred its new award, the Young Scholars Medal, on Oren Bar-Gill LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’05 and Jeanne C. Fromer ’02. The award was created to “call attention to academic work that is practical, focused on the real-world and can influence law for the better.”
The medal recognizes Bar-Gill for “his insights into consumer psychology, which are the basis for his proposal of specific legal solutions to match specific problems in the markets for cell phones, subprime mortgages and credit cards.” Fromer is honored for “her work exploring the claiming systems of patent and copyright law, as well as forum shopping in patent litigation.”
The award comes with a $5,000 prize and the opportunity to speak at the ALI annual meeting.
Bar-Gill is a professor at New York University’s Law School and teaches courses on contracts and law, economics and psychology, among others. He focuses his research on behavioral law and economics, consumer contacts, contract law and economic analysis of law. He is the author of “The Law, Economics and Psychology of Subprime Mortgage Contracts,” which appeared in the Cornell Law Review in 2009, “Making Credit Safer,” which appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in 2008 (with Elizabeth Warren) and “Mobile Misperceptions,” which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology in 2009 (with Rebecca Stone). He is also the author of a forthcoming book, “Market Failure and Behavioral Economics” (Harvard University Press).
Fromer is an associate professor of law at Fordham School of Law, who teaches in the areas of intellectual property and contracts, specializing in intellectual property and information law, with particular emphasis on unified theories of patent and copyright law.
Prior to her appointment at Fordham, Fromer served as a law clerk to Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice David H. Souter ’66 of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is the author of “The Layers of Obviousness in Patent Law,” (Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, 2008; Intellectual Property Law Review, 2009), and Claiming Intellectual Property,” (University of Chicago Law Review, 2009). She also wrote “Trade Secrecy in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” a chapter which will appear in the forthcoming book “The Law and Theory of Trade Secrecy: A Handbook of Contemporary Research” (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming 2011).
A group of law school deans nominated more than 70 candidates, all professors in their first decade of teaching, for the Young Scholars Medal. The selection committee was chaired by William Fletcher, Professor Emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.