Professor Austin, a 1973 alumna of the School, has been on the faculty since 1977. She is an expert in torts and insurance law who is particularly known for her work in cultural conflict and international torts; the socioeconomic and legal status of the working poor; and environmental racism. Between her graduation from Penn Law and her appointment to the faculty she was an associate of the Philadelphia firm of Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis--whose partners joined with the William A. Schnader Foundation to create the Schnader Professorship in 1968. Mr. Schnader had been Attorney General of Pennsylvania, president of the National Conference on Uniform State Laws, and a founder of the Uniform Commercial Code.
Professor Fitts is a Yale Law School graduate who joined the Penn Law faculty in 1985 and is serving as associate dean with responsibility for
academic activities. His areas of expertise are administrative law, the separation of powers, legislative powers, and the law and the political process.
Before coming to Penn he served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.
His chair was established in 1971 by Robert G. Fuller, Jr., a 1964 alumnus of Penn Law who has been active with class reunions and served on the Biddle Advisory Council. The Fuller Chair honors "professors who demonstrate scholarship and the ability to communicate to students a knowledge of the essential principles of law and a humanistic understanding of the application of these principles."