Professor Lawrence Solan Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics

The Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics (GSFL) honored Professor Lawrence Solan, director of the Center for the Study of Law, Language & Cognition, with its 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award, along with Kate Haworth of Aston University. The awards were presented at the GSFL Annual Roundtable held at the University of Graz, Austria, in September.

The prestigious awards are given out each year to researchers or practitioners who have made outstanding contributions to the areas of forensic linguistics, forensic phonetics, and/or language and law. Past recipients include Professors Janet Ainsworth, Susan Blackwell, Tina Cambier-Langeveld, Malcolm Coulthard, Diana Eades, Peter French, Robert Leonard, Isabel Picornell, Roger Shuy, Peter Tiersma, and Marie Teresa Turell.

“Having devoted so much of my career to the study of language and law, this recognition is extremely gratifying,” said Solan. “I look forward to continued work in this area, including contact with the Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics.”

Solan, who holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics, is Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Director of Graduate Education at the Law School. His scholarly works are devoted to exploring interdisciplinary issues related to law, language and psychology, especially in the areas of statutory and contractual interpretation, the attribution of liability and blame, and linguistic evidence. He is the author of several books on law and language, including The Language of Judges (University of Chicago Press 1993), which is widely recognized as a seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. He has served as president of the International Association of Forensic Linguistics and on the board of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health and the editorial board of the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.