Schauer Receives Traynor Award for Faculty Achievement

University of Virginia law professor Frederick Schauer has received the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Faculty Achievement Award, Dean Paul G. Mahoney announced at a faculty luncheon Monday.

"Fred's work — deeply informed by legal and non-legal theory but firmly anchored to the problems law must solve — exemplifies the scholarly values of this institution," Mahoney said.

Schauer, the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, joined the Law School in 2008 from Harvard University. A leading expert on the First Amendment, constitutional law and legal philosophy, he is the author of numerous books, including "The Law of Obscenity," "Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry," "Playing by the Rules: A Philosophical Examination of Rule-Based Decision-Making in Law and in Life," "Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes" and the 2009 publication "Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning." He also recently edited "The Theory of Rules, by Karl Llewellyn," and is the author of more than 200 articles as well.

Mahoney said that even since the last time he introduced Schauer, at a 2009 chair lecture, the prolific scholar has published numerous articles or essays, as well as two books.

In recent work such as "Can Bad Science Be Good Evidence?" and "In Defense of Rule-Based Evidence Law — and Epistemology Too," Schauer explores the similarities and differences between epistemology in law and other disciplines and "use[s] the resulting insights to guide doctrine or policy," Mahoney said.

The Traynor award was established in 1994 with a gift by Madeleine Traynor in honor of her husband, a former chief justice of the California Supreme Court and a visiting professor at the Law School during the late 1960s. Schauer said he was honored to earn the award, which provides $5,000 to the recipient and is given about every other year to a senior faculty member.

"It is a mistake to think that scholarship, even when solely authored, is entirely an individual enterprise," Schauer said."A huge amount of scholarly success is a function of tangible and intangible support, challenges and ideas from colleagues, and an environment in which serious scholarship is highly valued. All of that very much exists at Virginia, and I view this award as a symbol of what the school stands for as much as anything about my individual accomplishments."