Once, over lunch, I recall a law professor reflecting on scholarly work’s ephemeral nature. Legal academics, he thought, should consider themselves lucky if their articles sparked a discussion that lasted for even a few years. By that standard, Professor Stephen Sugarman’s seminal work on school finance reform, done in collaboration with John Coons and William Clune, must count as a…

I first met Steve Sugarman at an annual meeting of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), probably in the early 1990s. As a teacher of torts, among other things, I had of course read some of his often seminal, always bracing torts scholarship—especially his iconoclastic, pathbreaking book Doing Away with Personal Injury Law (1989)…

Professor Steve Sugarman has been a man for all seasons in the world of tort law. His published work runs across the spectrum of responsibility for injurer-based harm—embracing intentional misconduct, fault-based recovery, strict liability, no-fault compensation schemes, and social insurance. Much of Sugarman’s scholarship on tort and alternative compensation systems, up to…

Steve Sugarman joined the Berkeley faculty nearly fifty years ago. Since then, he has made unparalleled contributions to the law school and to legal scholarship. This Festschrift provides the opportunity to honor someone whose career has contributed enormously to the University of California’s missions of teaching, scholarship, and service…