Gordon Wins LSA's Wheeler Award

We're delighted to learn that Robert W Gordon, Stanford Law school, has won the Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award of the Law and Society Association.  He shares the honor with Laura Beth Nielsen of the American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University.  The Wheeler Award is given to “an outstanding mentor for graduate, professional or undergraduate students who are working on issues of law and society.”  Here’s the citation:

Robert W. Gordon (credit)

Robert Gordon, a pillar in the field of legal history, “has guided, supported, and inspired several generations of legal historians,” so many that “nearly everyone in the field of legal history in the U.S., and many outside the U.S., has been mentored by Bob in some way.” As one mentee put it, you would be hard-pressed “to find any significant legal historian younger than fifty who does not claim some intellectual genealogical connection to Bob.” Mentees described Gordon’s generosity in time, energy, and intellect given to them throughout their careers, from early law students to fully-established faculty. Many described “critically important” mentoring lessons they learned from Robert Gordon that they carry with them as they mentor their own students and colleagues, such as: “One of the [lessons] is to always find the best thing in a paper or an article or a book and to focus on that. All work is flawed. That goes without saying. What we can learn from is the good stuff in, and most serious work in the history of the law has some spark of genius, or some bit of material that adds important insights into one or another important legal-historical question.” In addition, Gordon is an “influential and widely respected” legal historian who has made “lasting contributions” to the Law & Society community. He has served as President of the ASLH, Trustee for LSA, twice served as chair of the Hurst Prize Committee, and has co-directed the Hurst Summer Institute for Legal History. “Whatever the venue or endeavor,” one of his nominees writes, “Bob invariably energizes everyone in the room with his infectious curiosity about legal ideas, institutions, and practices and his utterly unique way of engaging with the work of scholars across fields and at every career stage.”

H/t  Susanna Blumenthal