Professor William Eskridge Jr. and Co-Author Honored for Groundbreaking Book

Professor William Eskridge Jr. and his co-author of a foundational casebook in legal education have been recognized by the Association of American Law Schools for their groundbreaking scholarly contributions.

The association’s Section on Legislation and Law of the Political Process honored Eskridge, the Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law at Yale Law School, together with the late Philip P. Frickey, with its Scholarly Achievement Award.

Eskridge and Frickey, who taught at UC Berkeley Law and died in 2010, received the award as co-authors of a dozen leading law review articles, the foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s review of the 1993 Supreme Court term, and their field-establishing “Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy.” The casebook is an introduction to the field of legislation and regulation, focusing on how legislatures, agencies, and courts contribute to the creation of public policy. First published in 1987, “Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy” was praised by Judge Richard Posner as one of a handful of the most important casebooks of the 20th century. The book revived legislation as a serious academic field and has framed the field’s pedagogy and scholarship for the last 40 years. Now in its seventh edition, the influential casebook is used in first year and upper-level law courses throughout the country.

The awards are hosted by several of the association’s 108 sections organized around various academic disciplines and topics of interest. This year’s winners were acknowledged at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting on Jan. 9.

“AALS sections are important communities that create spaces where law school faculty and staff connect, share ideas, and advance scholarship and pedagogy in their fields,” said Austen Parrish, AALS President and Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. “The inspiring individuals recognized this year with section awards are fabulous leaders, teachers, and scholars, and the programs and institutions honored are so well deserving.”

Eskridge’s primary legal academic interest has been statutory interpretation. In addition to the casebook with Frickey, Eskridge has also published Dynamic Statutory Interpretation (Harvard University Press, 1994) and several dozen law review articles (many with Frickey) in this area. In 1990–95, Eskridge represented a gay couple suing for recognition of their same-sex marriage. Since then, he has published a field-establishing casebook, three monographs, and dozens of law review articles articulating a legal and political framework for proper state treatment of sexual and gender minorities. His most recent book, co-authored with Christopher Riano, is “Marriage Equality: From Outlaws to In-Laws” (Yale University Press, 2020), which received the ABA Silver Gavel Award.

AALS, a membership organization of law schools, states as its mission “to uphold and advance excellence in legal education.”