The Federalist Society and the Journal of Law & Public Policy will present the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award to Professor Jed Shugerman at the Federalist Society’s annual banquet on April 14th.
The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has “furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of that professor’s ideological leanings or favored theories of jurisprudence,” according to current Federalist Society President Will Scharf ‘11.
The award was given for the first time in 2005 to Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried, for whom it was subsequently named. The Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award has been awarded every year since, except for in 2007, in which the Federalist Society conferred a different award to Judge Laurence Silberman.
Previous honorees who have received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award include Learned Hand Professor of Law Mary Ann Glendon (2006), Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law Robert C. Clark (2008), Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law Jack Goldsmith (2009), and Bruce Bromley Professor of Law John F. Manning, last year’s recipient.
An expert on history and the American judicial system, Shugerman completed his doctoral studies in history at Yale University in 2008. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a B.A. from Yale College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history. His research has focused on judicial independence, the adoption of judicial elections in the U.S., and the effect of this system on tort law and constitutionalism.
The Federalist Society was incorporated in August 1982 after the convening of a symposium on federalism at Yale Law School. The Federalist Society is “founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be,” according to the group’s website. Since 1982, the Society has grown to include approximately 180 law school chapters and approximately 35,000 members. With over 300 members, the HLS Federalist Society is one of the nation’s largest chapters, sponsoring speeches and debates on a range of legal and policy issues throughout the year.
—Greg DiBella