AALS Evidence Section honors Professor Imwinkelried with lifetime achievement award
The Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Evidence recently announced that Professor Ed Imwinkelried is the 2021 recipient of the John Henry Wigmore Lifetime Achievement Award.
“John Henry Wigmore was a giant,” Imwinkelried said. “His treatise on evidence is regarded as the most famous treatise in American law. So, it is a great honor to receive this award.”
The award honors a person who has made leading contributions to the understanding of the process of proof, the reform of evidence law, or both.
“I cannot express how deserving Ed is of this award,” said UC Davis Law Professor Jasmine E. Harris, incoming chair-elect of the AALS Section on Evidence. “His work in evidence law generally and expert evidence specifically has been nothing short of field-defining.”
Imwinkelried said he was fortunate to be assigned to co-write The New Wigmore volumes on privilege law.
“The original treatise is still the most influential in the area of privilege, but then Wolters Kluwer is publishing this new series,” Imwinkelried said. “In fact, two other contributors to The New Wigmore, Roger Park at Hastings, and my good friend, David Kaye at Penn State, also have been recipients of the Wigmore Award.”
An exceptionally prolific scholar, Imwinkelried is the co-author of 18 evidence treatises and texts and the author of another four texts as well as more than 100 law review articles. Although he retired from UC Davis Law, Imwinkelried continues to update the treatises and texts.
Imwinkelried placed 42nd on the “ScholarRank Top 250” authors list, based on an analysis of all articles in the HeinOnline database and published earlier this year. He is the highest-ranked evidence scholar on the list.
In November, LexisNexis released the three-volume, sixth edition of Scientific Evidence, which is co-authored by Imwinkelried and has been cited by the Supreme Court. Imwinkelried is working on the fourth edition of The New Wigmore: Evidentiary Privileges.