Sunday, December 13, 2020

Anne Fleming Tributes

Several tributes to my Georgetown Law colleague Anne Fleming have been launched or otherwise transpired since her death on the eve of the present academic year.  I know of four.  The first is a joint effort of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) and the Business History Conference (BHC), the Anne Fleming Article Prize.  As the BHC explains:

The sudden and unexpected death of Anne Fleming in August 2020 was a tragic loss to academia. Anne's work was at the interface of legal and business history. The central concerns in Anne’s work related to poverty, economic justice, finance and banking, debt, consumer protection, bankruptcy, and other questions of financial equity.  

The prize is awarded every other year to the author or authors of the best article published in the previous two years in either Law and History Review or Enterprise and Society on the relation of law and business/economy in any region or historical period. It is awarded on the recommendation of the editors of the Law and History Review (the official journal of ASLH) and Enterprise and Society (the official journal of Business History Conference). No submission is necessary. The prize will be awarded in 2022, for work published in 2020 and 2021. The prize is for the amount of $250.

Second, at this year's virtual annual meeting of the ASLH, Laura Kalman, a past president of the Society, noted Professor Fleming's passing at a session devoted to Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars.  Professor Fleming was herself a Preyer Scholar, and she was serving on the selection committee when she died.  “She became the anchor of our committee,” Professor Kalman said.  “She would circulate spread sheets to organize us at the beginning of our deliberations, she was incisive, and she modeled good humor. . . . She combined excellence with humanity, and we join everyone who mourns her premature loss.”

The last two tributes involve Georgetown Law.  The editors and staff of the Georgetown Law Journal have dedicated Volume 109 to Professor Fleming's memory.  I contributed a tribute.  Finally, Dean William M. Treanor has announced that a set of four-year research professorships for recently tenured scholars has been renamed the Anne Fleming Research Professorships.

--Dan Ernst