Catherine Sharkey wins lifetime achievement award in field of tort law
Catherine Sharkey, Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy, has been named by the Association of American Law Schools Section on Torts and Compensation Systems as the recipient of the 2026 Prosser Award. Named for William L. Prosser, author of a seminal tort law treatise, the award honors lifetime scholarship, teaching, and service in the field of tort law.
In her cutting-edge scholarship, Sharkey explores tort law’s intersection with liability insurance, regulation of health and safety risks, and other disciplines. She has broken new ground in examining tort law’s relevance to the regulation of artificial intelligence and products liability in the online marketplace. With more than 90 law review articles, essays, and book chapters to Sharkey’s name, her expertise on the economic loss rule, federal preemption of state tort law, and punitive damages is recognized nationally. The US Supreme Court, five of the federal circuit courts, and the highest courts of 10 states have cited her scholarship.
Previous winners of the Prosser Award include notable figures such as Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Jack Weinstein of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Sharkey was Calabresi’s student at Yale Law School and subsequently clerked for him.
“Cathy Sharkey is, without question, the leading scholar who presents torts as a public law subject,” says Calabresi. “She has analyzed all sides of the topic with brilliance, fairness, and depth. Her link of torts to insurance is especially useful and profound. I am immensely happy that she will receive the Prosser Award.”
Sharkey, along with Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, has co-authored two casebooks, Cases and Materials on Torts and Business, Defamation and Privacy Torts. She joined the NYU Law faculty in 2007 and won the Law School’s Podell Distinguished Teaching Award three years later.
John Goldberg ’91, dean of Harvard Law School and a Prosser Award recipient, describes Sharkey as “a true leader among torts scholars. By combining theory, doctrine, and careful attention to political and litigation realities, she has articulated a distinctive and coherent account of tort law as primarily concerned with harm reduction. In the process, she has shed crucial light on the most pressing and complex tort topics of our time, including punitive damages, preemption, and public nuisance.”
An elected member of the American Law Institute, Sharkey currently serves as an advisor for both the Restatement Third of Torts: Remedies and Principles of the Law: Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence. She previously was an advisor for the Restatement Third of Torts: Liability for Economic Loss. Sharkey is both a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States and a member of its Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence in Federal Agencies. The American Bar Association’s Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section honored Sharkey with the 2023 Robert M. McKay Law Professor Award for “outstanding contributions to the fields of tort, trial practice, or insurance law.” She was also a 2011-12 Guggenheim Fellow.
“Equal parts theory and doctrine, Sharkey’s work spans out to reach scholars, judges, and practicing lawyers,” says Martha Chamallas, Distinguished University Professor and Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law Emerita at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, who won the Prosser Award in 2022. “Her ‘law and economics’ approach has a heart. In her vision, deterrence is a goal pursued not solely for efficiency but to minimize the loss and suffering of tort victims. Her many contributions and collaborations at NYU and beyond have greatly enhanced the visibility of tort theory and upgraded the whole field.”
