Harvard Law Professor Richard H. Fallon, an award-winning scholar and teacher, has been recognized by the Association of American Law Schools with the 2021 Daniel J. Meltzer Award. The AALS Section on Federal Courts established the award in 2017 to honor the life and work of the late Daniel J. Meltzer, a former HLS faculty member. The award recognizes a professor of federal courts who has exemplified over the course of their career Meltzer’s excellence in teaching, careful and ground-breaking scholarship, engagement in issues of public importance, generosity as a colleague, and overall contribution to the field of federal courts.
“I was especially touched, as well as honored, to receive an award named for Dan Meltzer, who was my close friend and cherished collaborator,” said Fallon. “I have never known a more admirable human being.”
Fallon, who now holds the Story professorship (which was last held by Meltzer), has written extensively about constitutional law and federal courts law. He co-edited with Meltzer and other HLS colleagues, including HLS Dean John F. Manning ’85, the revision of the classic casebook Hart & Wechsler’s “The Federal Courts and the Federal System” (7th ed. 2015).
Other books by Fallon include “The Nature of Constitutional Rights: The Invention and Logic of Strict Judicial Scrutiny” (Cambridge University Press, 2019), “Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court” (Harvard University Press, 2018), which won the Thomas M. Cooley Book Prize given by the Georgetown Center on the Constitution, and “The Dynamic Constitution” (Cambridge University Press, 2d ed. 2013), “a superb book,” according to Erwin Chemerinsky ’78, dean of Berkley Law. “Though written for non-lawyers, the brilliance of ‘The Dynamic Constitution’ is that everyone from constitutional law professors to those with no training in law can enjoy, understand, and learn from reading it.”
Fallon, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has also been recognized by his students. He is a two-time winner of Harvard Law School’s Sacks-Freund Award, which is voted annually by the School’s graduating class.
In addition to Fallon, Martin H. Redish ’70, the Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy at Northwestern University School of Law, was also awarded the 2021 Meltzer Award.