Distinguished Professor Awards Program

Distinguished Professor

2015 Distinguished Professor

Alain A. Levasseur

O'Bryon & Schnabel, PLC
New Orleans

Professor Emeritus Alain A. Levasseur was the Hermann Moyse, Sr. Professor of Law; Director, European Studies Program; Associate Director for International Studies, Center for Commercial and Business Law, until he retired in June 2015 from the LSU Law Center. He holds a DESS from the Faculté de Droit de Paris, and an MCL from Tulane University Law School. He was an associate with the Paris firm of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander. Professor Levasseur served as a Technical Assistant at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. from 1969 to 1970. In the fall of 1970, he resumed teaching at Tulane University Law School until he joined the LSU Law Center faculty. In 1998, the Université d'Aix Marseille Paul Cézanne bestowed on Professor Levasseur the degree of Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa. In January 2010, Professor Levasseur received a second Doctorate Honoris Causa, this one from the Université de Paris Panthéon Assas. The French government named him Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques. In 2014 he was selected as Scholar in Residence by the Louisiana Bar Foundation. Professor Levasseur is the author of over twenty books in English and French, and some thirty articles in English and fifty in French. He is most proud of his latest book, "Deciphering a Civil Code" (2015) written with the support of the Louisiana Bar Foundation. He has also spearheaded many translations particularly the Dictionary of the Civil Code, and the French Civil Code for the official site of the French government (Légifrance).

2014 Distinguished Professor

Gail S. Stephenson

Southern University Law Center

Professor Gail S. Stephenson is Director of Legal Analysis and Writing at Southern University Law Center. She has been a full-time faculty member at SULC since 2004. She teaches legal analysis and writing and is the adviser for the Southern University Law Review. Her scholarship is primarily in the areas of culturally relevant teaching and Louisiana civil procedure. She was President of the Baton Rouge Bar Association in 2012 and President of the Baton Rouge Association of Women Attorneys in 1995. She has also been a consultant for the Louisiana Notary Public Examination since 2008.

Stephenson earned her B.A. from Northwestern State University of Louisiana and her J.D. from LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, where she was a member of the Louisiana Law Review and Order of the Coif. Her experience before joining the SULC faculty includes serving as Administrative General Counsel for the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal and as law clerk for First Circuit Judge Melvin Shortess and U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola, and practicing insurance and corporate defense law.

2013 Distinguished Professor

William R. Corbett

LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center

William R. Corbett is the Frank L. Maraist and Wex S. Malone Professor of Law at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center of Louisiana State University. He has been a faculty member at LSU since 1991. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of labor and employment law and torts. He served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Law Center from 1997 through 1999. He has served as the executive director of the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel since 2001 and served as executive director of the Louisiana Judicial College from 1998 through 2000. Corbett earned his B.A. from Auburn University and his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law, where he was editor in chief of the Alabama Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Before coming to the LSU Law Center, he practiced labor and employment law in Birmingham, Alabama with Burr & Forman.

2013 Distinguished Professor

Robert Force

Tulane University Law School

Robert Force is the Niels F. Johnsen Professor of Maritime Law and Director Emeritus of the Tulane Maritime Law Center, of which he was the founding director. He has taught at Tulane Law School for 45 years. Before coming to Tulane, he clerked for state and federal judges in Pennsylvania, practiced law in Philadelphia, and taught law at Indiana University. Although he currently teaches courses in admiralty and civil procedure, he has over his career taught a wide range of subjects, including criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, transnational litigation, international commercial arbitration and international sale of goods. He was a co-reporter for the Louisiana Evidence Code and was a consultant on the project to study the Louisiana judicial system.

2012 Distinguished Professor

George W. Pugh*

Professor Emeritus
LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center

Professor George W. Pugh received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Louisiana State University, his J.S.D. from Yale Law School, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Aix-Marseille III, France.

He began teaching law at Louisiana State University in 1950, and after graduate work at Yale Law School, rejoined the LSU law faculty in 1952 and taught from 1952 to 1994. He was made full Professor in 1959 and Julius B. Nachman Professor in 1984. On retirement, he was awarded Professor Emeritus.

He was admitted to practice in Louisiana in 1950 and before the United States Supreme Court in 1967. His major areas of interest are evidence and administration of justice (civil and criminal.

He is a longtime member of the Council of the Louisiana State Law Institute and beginning in 1981. He was Coordinator and Co-Reporter for the Institute's project for a Code of Evidence for Louisiana. The code was adopted by the Louisiana Legislature in 1988. Professor Pugh served as Louisiana's first Judicial Administrator from 1954-56 and as Judge ad hoc on the Louisiana Court of Appeal on a number of cases in 1960.

Professor Pugh is a member of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana and American Bar Associations. He is a past chairman of the Criminal Law Section of the Louisiana State Bar Association, and served as chairman of the young lawyers section and several times on the Board of Governors of the State Bar. He was a member of the Grand Jury Committee and the Committee on Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence of the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association. In 1984 he was Chairman of the Committee on the Future of Criminal Justice of the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association. Professor Pugh is a member of the American Law Institute and is listed in Who's Who in America.