April 9, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—Austin D. Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor, will receive an honorary doctor of laws from his alma mater, Providence College, on Saturday, May 17. Sarat will be one of six distinguished individuals honored at the school’s commencement exercises.
A graduate of Providence’s Liberal Arts Honors Program, class of 1969, Sarat earned his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin before coming to Amherst and, later, earned a jurisprudence doctorate from Yale Law School. He is being honored for his pioneering work in the development of legal study in the liberal arts and for his internationally important scholarship on capital punishment.
Sarat, who has taught at Amherst since 1974, is author, co-author or editor of more than 60 books, including Mercy on Trial (2005), When the State Kills (2001) and Law, Violence and the Possibility of Justice (2001). Winner of the James Boyd White Prize by the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities and the co-recipient of the 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Award, Sarat has also served as president of the Law and Society Association and of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities.
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