2017 Metcalf Award Recipient: Gary Lawson

Gary Lawson is the Philip S. Beck Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. His areas of scholarly interest are constitutional theory and history, administrative law, and jurisprudence. Since arriving at BU Law in 2000, he has distinguished himself as one of the school’s most effective teachers. He is also one of the most versatile, taking on a wide range of courses, sometimes on very short notice. He currently teaches Property, Administrative Law, and Evidence. A Law School colleague says, “I cannot overstate the value of Professor Lawson …. he is a challenging, rigorous, open-minded, and even-handed intellectual.” In student evaluations, he regularly scores well above the mean and draws rave comments.

While Professor Lawson’s success as an educator is impressive by any measure, it is even more remarkable for his dealing with symptoms of Asperger syndrome. Professor Lawson employs a unique teaching style that strays from mainstream law school pedagogical theory and plays to his strength of presenting complex ideas in an organized fashion that makes them more accessible to students.

Professor Lawson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, summa cum laude, from Claremont Men’s College and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. His many publications include a seven-edition textbook on administrative law, four scholarly books, and more than seventy law review articles. He twice clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, first at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then at the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a founding member, and serves on the Board of Directors, of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

Prior to this Metcalf recognition, Professor Lawson has won several prestigious teaching awards at both Boston University School of Law and Northwestern University School of Law.