Jeffrey O'Connell


Jeffrey Thomas O'Connell was an American legal expert, professor, and attorney. In 1965, O'Connell and Harvard Law School professor Robert Keeton co-authored the book Basic Protection for the Traffic Victim: A Blueprint for Reforming Automobile Insurance, which created the theoretical underpinnings of no-fault law. His specialty was product liability, and he wrote numerous books about this, advocating no-fault insurance for automobiles and other products.

Biography

O'Connell was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. O’Connell began his legal career as a trial lawyer in Boston for the firm Hale and Dorr before turning to higher education. He served on the faculty at the University of Virginia as the Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law from 1980 until his retirement in the spring of 2012. Prior to joining UVA's faculty, O'Connell taught at the University of Illinois for 16 years. He also taught at the University of Iowa and was a visiting professor at Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England. He received 2 Guggenheim Fellowships and was a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in 1987.

Works

Books on tort reform and law