Judge Ralph Winter ’60 Receives Simeon E. Baldwin Award

Yale Law School’s Center for the Study of Corporate Law has announced that Judge Ralph K. Winter ’60 is the recipient of its 2008 Simeon E. Baldwin Award. The Baldwin Award, established in 2007, is presented by the Center to a Yale Law graduate in recognition of distinguished achievement in law and business.

Ralph Winter is a Senior Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, having served since 1982. He received a B.A. degree from Yale College in 1957 and an LL.B. degree from Yale Law School in 1960. He was a member of the Law School faculty from 1962-82.  At the time of his appointment to the bench in 1982, he was the William K. Townsend Professor of Law. He continues to teach at Yale Law School part-time and is a past recipient of the Yale Law School’s Association’s Award of Merit.

In presenting the award to Judge Winter, Professor Roberta Romano ’80, director of the Center for the Study of Corporate Law, recognized Judge Winter’s “foundational contributions to corporate law as a scholar and jurist” and said his pathbreaking 1977 article, “State Law, Shareholder Protection, and the Theory of the Corporation,” “challenged the prevailing understanding of state corporate law as a ‘race for the bottom’ and transformed the debate, by using economic analysis to identify fundamental flaws in the dominant reasoning that failed to recognize the impact of markets on behavior.”

“The 1977 article continues to be read and cited,” she added, “with 10 percent of its over 200 citations having been in 2007-08 publications. This is a rare achievement.”

Professor Romano praised Judge Winter for his success in influencing corporate law not only from the bench but also through his teaching at the Law School.