Name That Award

To recognize the trailblazing career of Professor Patricia J. Williams, the Section on Race and Private Law of the Association of American Law Schools has named an annual award in her honor. The Patricia J. Williams Award celebrates Williams’ role as a pioneer in examining law and literature as well as race in American legal theory. Professor Mehrsa Baradaran of UC Irvine School of Law is the inaugural recipient, selected for her outstanding contributions to the field of race and private law.

Williams is the author of multiple books and hundreds of essays and articles in leading journals, popular magazines and newspapers. Her 1991 book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, was named one of the 25 best books of 1991 by the Voice Literary Supplement, one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine, and one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the decade by Amazon.com. She has also received numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship. Williams’ most recent book is The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law (The New Press, 2024).

“I feel so honored, so humbled and so very lucky,” said Williams. “But most of all, I feel delight that the inaugural recipient will be Mehrsa Baradaran for her extraordinary scholarship.”