Cathy Sharkey is the 2026 Prosser Award Honoree
Congratulations to Cathy Sharkey, named the 2026 Prosser Award honoree by the AALS Torts & Compensation Systems Section! From the announcement:
The Executive Committee of the Torts & Compensation Section is pleased to announce the 2026 recipient of the William L. Prosser Award: Professor Catherine Sharkey. She will receive the award at the annual AALS meeting in January 2026. Named in honor of William L. Prosser, author of the seminal treatise on tort law, the award recognizes lifetime contributions to scholarship, teaching and service in the field of tort law.
Professor Sharkey’s scholarship explores tort law’s intersection with other disciplines, most notably with liability insurance and regulation of health and safety risks. She has been in the vanguard of cutting-edge scholarship, both in the United States and internationally, exploring tort law’s relevance to the regulation of Artificial Intelligence and products liability in the age of the online marketplace. She has published over ninety law review articles, essays, and book chapters and is a nationally recognized expert on the Economic Loss Rule, federal preemption of state tort law, and punitive damages. Straddling the worlds of theory and practice, her scholarship has been cited by the highest state courts in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, as well as by the United States Supreme Court and the Federal Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits.
Professor Sharkey is an elected member of the American Law Institute, where she served an Advisor for the Restatement Third of Torts: Liability for Economic Loss, and she currently serves as an Advisor for both the Restatement Third of Torts: Remedies, and for Principles of the Law: Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence.
Professor Sharkey is co-author (with Richard Epstein) of two casebooks, Cases and Materials on Torts (in its 13th edition) and Business, Defamation and Privacy Torts (in its 1st edition). She pioneered a class on Business, Defamation, and Privacy Torts, which she has taught at NYU School of Law since joining in 2007. In 2010, she won the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award.
Professor Sharkey is the recipient of the 2023 Robert M. McKay Law Professor Award for “outstanding contributions to the fields of tort, trial practice, or insurance law,” given by the Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section of the American Bar Association and a 2011-12 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship “to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional ability in their chosen field and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors.”