Two University of Chicago scholars have been honored for their extraordinary contributions to teaching and student life within the UChicago community.
Profs. Mark Siegler and Geoffrey R. Stone are the recipients of this year’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award. Established in 1997, the awards are named in honor of Prof. Norman Maclean, PhD’40, the critically acclaimed author of A River Runs Through It who taught at UChicago for 40 years.
The awards are presented by the Alumni Association and the Alumni Board, which have also recognized 10 other winners of the 2021 Alumni Awards for their professional achievements and service on behalf of the University.
Mark Siegler is the Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, the director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and the executive director of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence. A respected physician specializing in internal medicine, Siegler is internationally known for his work in the field of clinical medical ethics, a field he created and named in 1974. In 1984, the University of Chicago established the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, which quickly became the largest program in clinical ethics in the world. More than 450 physicians and other health professionals have trained at the MacLean Center, many of whom now direct ethics programs in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa and China. Siegler has practiced internal medicine at the University for 47 years.
Siegler’s seminal 1981 paper, "Searching for moral certainty in medicine: a proposal for a new model of the doctor-patient encounter,” was cited extensively by the 1982 President’s Commission as the basis for recommending a shared decision-making approach for doctors and patients, an approach which has now become the standard model for the doctor-patient relationship in the United States.
Siegler, whose research interests include the ethics of the doctor-patient relationship, living-donor organ transplantation, end-of-life care, ethics consultation and medical decision-making, has published more than 200 journal articles, 50 book chapters and six books. His textbook Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine, co-authored with Albert Jonsen and William J. Winslade, is now in its eighth edition, has been translated into nine languages, and is widely used by physicians and health professionals around the world. His most recent book Clinical Medical Ethics: Landmark Works of Mark Siegler, MD, was published by Springer in 2017.
Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. After serving as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the Supreme Court, Stone joined the faculty in 1973. Stone has served as dean of the Law School (1987–1994) and provost of the University of Chicago (1994–2002).
Stone is the author or co-author of many books on constitutional law, including National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021); Democracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2020); The Free Speech Century (2019); Sex and the Constitution (2017); Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us In the Dark (2007); War and Liberty (2007); and Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (2004), which won eight national book awards.
Stone is also the co-editor of one of the nation’s leading constitutional law casebooks and chief editor of a 25-volume series, Inalienable Rights, published by Oxford University Press. He has been an editor of The Supreme Court Review for thirty years.
Stone is a former chair of the board of the American Constitution Society, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Law Institute, and the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Stone to the five-member NSA review group, which produced an influential report following up on the Edward Snowden disclosures. He then served as a senior advisor to the director of national intelligence, and in 2014 he chaired the faculty committee that drafted the University of Chicago’s statement on free expression, which has since been adopted by more than 60 colleges and universities across the nation.
In honor of Stone’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award, the D’Angelo Law Library acquired a 1973 edition of Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England. Milton originally wrote the pamphlet in opposition to the Licensing Order Act of 1643, which prohibited the publication of books without approval of the English government.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
