Post Date: April 24, 2006
Professor Richard Fallon is among the 195 new fellows recently selected to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Members are chosen on the basis of “preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”
“Dick is a brilliant scholar and an inspiring teacher,” said Dean Elena Kagan. “His election to the Academy is richly deserved. I am very pleased that he continues the School’s strong tradition of membership in this distinguished organization.”
Fallon, a specialist in constitutional law, joined the HLS faculty in 1982. Last year, he was appointed to the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship of Constitutional Law, the chair once held by John Hart Ely and Laurence Tribe. His recent course offerings include the innovative Public Law Workshop, a seminar designed for students who are thinking about careers in legal scholarship and teaching. The workshop provides students a rare chance to critique works in progress by some of the nation’s leading experts in various fields of law.
Benjamin Heineman, a senior fellow at the Program on the Legal Profession and formerly the Senior Vice President-General Counsel at General Electric, was also named a fellow, along with Chief Justice John Roberts ’79, Joseph Flom ’48 and Kenneth Chenault ’77.
The new fellows will join 17 other members of the current HLS faculty who belong to the Academy.
The Academy — an interdisciplinary society of scholars based in Cambridge, Mass. — was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and others “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people.”