Fordham Law Associate Professor Jeanne C. Fromer was selected to receive one of the first two Young Scholars Medals from the American Law Institute. The medal honors her work exploring the claiming systems of patent and copyright law, as well as forum shopping in patent litigation.
“Jeanne Fromer is quite simply an outstanding scholar, and it is fitting that she was chosen to inaugurate ALI’s new award,” said Fordham Law’s Interim DeanMichael M. Martin. “Entering her fourth year on the faculty, she has already produced a body of work that epitomizes open-mindedness and rigor combining to improve the law in ways that can only be done within a branch of academia that is fully fluent with the details of the law and legal institutions.”
Fromer will be recognized along with the second honoree, Oren Bar-Gill of New York University School of Law. Both professors will receive a $5,000 prize, will speak at an upcoming ALI Annual Meeting, and will plan a conference devoted to identifying legal subjects that would benefit from law reform.
ALI created the Young Scholars Medal to call attention to academic work that is practical, focused on the real-world and can influence law for the better. Deans from law schools nominated more than 70 candidates, all professors in their first decade of teaching. The selection committee was chaired by William Fletcher, Professor Emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“Both scholars are fluent in the details of law and legal institutions,” said Judge Fletcher. “They produce work that is consistent with ALI’s goals of clarifying the law and adapting it to social needs and the administration of justice.”
Fromer teaches in the areas of intellectual property and contracts. She writes about copyright, patent, and trademark law.
Before joining Fordham Law, Fromer served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She also worked at Hale and Dorr LLP (now WilmerHale) as an intellectual-property attorney. In addition, she was an Alexander Fellow with the New York University School of Law and a Resident Fellow with Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.
– Jeanne C. Fromer
