Chairs Conferred on YLS Professors Doug Kysar and John Fabian Witt ’99

The Yale Corporation has voted to approve endowed professorships for two Yale Law School professors. Douglas Kysar has been named the Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law, and John Fabian Witt ’99 has been named the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law.

Doug Kysar joined Yale Law School in 2008. A leading scholar in the area of environmental law, he also teaches Torts, and Law & Globalization. He previously taught at Cornell University Law School for seven years and was a visiting professor at UCLA School of Law, Yale Law School, and Harvard Law School.

He has published numerous articles and several books, including Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental Law and the Search for Objectivity; Economics of Environmental Law; and The Torts Process.

He earned a B.A. in philosophy summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1995 and a J.D. magna cum laude in 1998 from Harvard Law School. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable William G. Young, Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, and practiced with Foley, Hoag, & Eliot in Boston before joining the faculty at Cornell.

The Joseph M. Field ’55 Professorship of Law was established in 2005 by a gift from Joseph M. Field ’55.

A renowned legal historian, John Fabian Witt joined Yale Law School in 2009. He previously taught at Columbia Law School for eight years and was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the spring of 2005.

He is the author of widely acclaimed work in the history of American law and in torts. His books include Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law; The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law; and the forthcoming Lincoln’s Code: War and Humanity in America.

Professor Witt earned three degrees from Yale: his B.A. in history summa cum laude in 1994, his J.D. in 1999, and his Ph.D. in history in 2000. He joined the Columbia law faculty in 2001, after clerking for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professorship of Law was created in 1990 through the generosity of David A. Jones ’60 and Betty Jones and members of the 1960 graduating class, on the occasion of their thirtieth reunion, to honor the memory of their deceased classmate, Allen H. Duffy ’60, a highly respected New Haven practitioner.