Award received November 2009

Photograph Courtesy of Special Collections Department, Harvard Law School Library

A lawyer, academic administrator, editor, and author - A. James Casner was a preeminent legal scholar and educator spending much of his career at Harvard University where he taught and also served as acting dean of the law school. Professor Casner graduated from the University of Illinois Law School in 1929 and earned a JSD from Columbia University in 1941. In the 1930's, he joined the American Law Institute as an adviser and reporter. This proved to be a long-term relationship resulting in many publications, among them Estate Planning, which has been reprinted many times; The Revocable Trust: An Essential Tool for the Practicing Lawyer; The Irrevocable Trust; Trusts under Which Beneficiaries Are to Be Determined; and with Robert A Stein, Estate Planning under the Tax Reform Act of 1976. Professor Casner was also both co-author and editor in chief of the American Law of Property. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1938 as a visiting lecturer only to become a full-time professor in 1940, a position he held until 1977 when he was awarded the Austin Wakeman Scott Professor Emeritus of Law. He also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Columbia University. In other professional pursuits, Professor Casner was a member of the Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge & Rugg (now Ropes & Gray) from 1945 to 1958. Throughout his exemplary career, he was the recipient of many awards, including the Treat Award from the National College of Probate Judges and the Estate Planner of the Year Award from the Boston Estate Planning Council, an affiliated council of the NAEPC.