Catherine Sharkey, Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy, will receive the Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award from the American Bar Association’s Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) on February 4 during the association’s midyear meeting. The award, named for the late Robert McKay, dean of NYU Law from 1967 to 1975, honors legal academics who through outstanding contributions in tort, trial practice, or insurance law have demonstrated commitment to advancing justice, scholarship, and the legal profession.
“Professor Sharkey is a renowned and highly prolific contributor in the area of tort law, advancing the scholarship and knowledge of not only her students, but lawyers in the field as well as both federal and state courts where she is widely cited,” TIPS Chair Gary Gassman said in a statement. “We are delighted to recognize her with this Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award.”
Sharkey, a leading authority on the economic loss rule, punitive damages, and federal preemption, has published more than 50 articles, essays, and book chapters in the fields of torts, business torts, products liability, administrative law, remedies, and class actions. She is co-author of Cases and Materials on Torts (12th edition, 2020) with Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law Richard Epstein and co-editor of Foundations of Tort Law (2nd edition, 2009) with Saul Levmore. She serves as an appointed public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and was a principal advisor on Administering by Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence in the Regulatory State, a project for ACUS’s Office of the Chairman. A 2011-12 Guggenheim Fellow, Sharkey is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an adviser to the Restatement Third, Torts: Liability for Economic Harm and Restatement Third, Torts: Remedies projects.
Sharkey earned a BA in economics summa cum laude at Yale University. A Rhodes Scholar, she received an MSc in economics for development, with distinction, from Oxford University, and her JD from Yale Law School, where she was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal. Sharkey served as a law clerk to Judge Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the US Supreme Court.
Posted 1/27/23