John A. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale Law School

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(From left) John Witt ’99, Roberta Romano ’80, John Langbein, Robert Todd Lang ’47, and Deputy Dean Al Klevorick

In presenting the award, Center Director Roberta Romano ’80 noted:

“John Langbein changed the conversation in investment law, by introducing modern finance theory - the portfolio theory of investments - into trust law, in his 1976 article, coauthored with Richard Posner, ‘Market Funds and Trust Investment Law.’ The article was a veritable intellectual earthquake. It caused a fundamental reorientation in the understanding of fiduciary obligations, in particular, the formulation of prudent person fiduciary standards, to be directed at the portfolio as a whole, and its diversification, rather than the risk of individual securities, a contribution that increased the wealth and thereby the welfare of countless Americans, whose portfolios would no longer consist of treasury bonds as trustees sought to be prudent. His scholarship bore fruit with his efforts through the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in the implementation of new standards in the Uniform Prudent Investor Act.”

John Witt ’99 and PhD ’00 (History), the Allen Duffy/Class of 1960 Professor at the Law School, in remarks honoring his teacher, further noted:

“It requires genius as a writer to be a great teacher of writing, at least at the highest levels. For more than forty years, John has been writing forcefully, brilliantly, and with the indefatigable energies that only the very best scholars manage to bring to their work. John’s second book, Torture and the Law of Proof, followed the insight of his first book that the key difference among legal systems was their methods of proof, to tell the stunning story of torture in the criminal procedure of the Continental legal systems of Spain and France. How did European legal systems come in the middle ages to use torture as a systematic device for criminal justice? In John’s telling, the turn to torture was the result of a system of criminal punishment that set prohibitively high standards for itself: two eyewitnesses or some circumstantial evidence and a confession. The imperative of punishing bad acts produced a theory of torture as permissible in cases of so-called ‘half-proof.’  John’s evaluation of the barbaric practice of torture, abolished only in the eighteenth century, was unsparing. It was the story of a legal system that had allowed its own high standards and ideals to produce a nightmarish system.” 

Witt concluded:

“Most recently John has published an astounding volume, a big textbook titled History of the Common Law, a book that represents the culmination of the History of the Common Law course he has taught so influentially for decades now. Co-authored with two of his most distinguished former students, the book has created a landmark for the legacy John has built in the world of legal education and legal scholarship. At law schools all around the country, his former students do their best to stand in his shoes and hold up the traditions of generosity, brilliance, and uncompromising moral vision that John has set for the entire profession.”