Professor Aaron Twerski Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquette Law School

Professor Aaron Twerksi, the Irwin and Jill Cohen Professor of Law and preeminent authority in the areas of products liability and tort law, was honored by Marquette Law School with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Twerski is a graduate of the law school. The awards program was held April 3.

“Throughout his career and his service to others and to the community, Professor Twerski has embodied and advanced the academic excellence and values of Marquette Law School,” said Interim Dean Maryellen Fullerton. “He is richly deserving of this honor.”

Twerski, a Milwaukee native, joined the Brooklyn Law School faculty in 1986. He said the Marquette Law School Lifetime Achievement Award reflects the excellent education he received at the school, and he credits his torts professor, James Ghiardi, as a major influence on his career. “I knew three weeks into [Professor Ghiardi’s torts class] that I wanted to be a law professor and teach torts,” he said.

Twerski is beloved and revered by generations of students at Brooklyn Law School, where he has taught for more than 30 years. “In Professor Twerski’s evaluations by students, adjectives such as ‘brilliant,’ ‘passionate’ and, notably, ‘caring’ abound,” said Fullerton.

Twerski also has taught at Duquesne University School of Law, and he was a visiting professor at Cornell, Boston University, and the University of Michigan law schools, and he served as dean of Hofstra Law School.

The award is the latest accolade in his stellar career. In 2015, he received the prestigious William L. Prosser Award from the American Association of Law School’s Torts and Compensation System Section. The American Bar Association's Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section honored him with the Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award, which recognizes law professors who are committed to the advancement of justice, scholarship and the legal profession in tort and insurance law.

Twerski was co-reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law (Third) Torts: Products Liability, and for his distinguished performance, the ALI named him the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter. He is the author of the leading textbook Products Liability: Problems and Process. He was appointed as a special master in the federal 9/11 cases dealing with the injuries claimed by those involved in the clean-up of the World Trade Center site.