AUSTIN, Texas—Professor Charles Alan Wright of The University of Texas at Austin School of Law has been appointed as a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. The July 1 appointment makes him the second UT Austin law faculty member numbered among those fellows; the other being Professor Basil Markasinis
“This is a case of very great honor being bestowed on a colleague who is certainly the most honored member of this faculty, and must be among the most frequently recognized of all UT Austin faculty,” said Dean M. Michael Sharlot of the School of Law.
The British Academy was founded in 1901 as the counterpart for the humanities and the social sciences to the Royal Society, which covers the natural sciences. This year, 34 scholars from the United Kingdom were elected as Fellows and 16 scholars from eight foreign nations were elected Corresponding Fellows.
“I’m quite overwhelmed by that,” Wright said of the appointment. “I certainly would never have expected any recognition of that sort from a foreign country, so this is very exciting for me,”
Sharlot said Wright’s appointment is particularly noteworthy because very few lawyers are taken. He said Wright was the only law professor among the Corresponding Fellows and there were only three law professors among the 34 ordinary Fellows.
Wright adds this honor to his membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Presidency of the American Law Institute, our nation’s leading body for law reform. He has been with the UT School of Law faculty since 1955 and is teaching half time on modified service. He has served as a visiting professor at Pennsylvania, Harvard, Yale and Cambridge, where he is an honorary Fellow of Wolfson College.
Wright also is among the most prolific scholars in the history of American law and is the acknowledged master of the law of federal procedure, with his enormous treatise being found in the chambers of federal judges and the offices of lawyers with a federal practice throughout our nation. He has been widely sought as an appellate advocate who has argued many cases before the United States Supreme Court.
As a member of the UT Austin faculty, Wright has been a leader in University governance and has held important positions in the administration of the NCAA. The Charles Alan Wright Chair Federal Courts was created in his honor and the UT Austin Board of Regents has authorized him to hold it during the duration of his modified service.
