Law professor to be honored by American Bar Association

Photo by David Leifer.

Hope Lewis, a professor in Northeastern’s School of Law and a human rights scholar and advocate for more than 20 years, will be honored with the American Bar Association’s prestigious Mayre Rasmussen Award for the Advancement of Women in International Law. The ABA’s Section of International Law gives the award annually “to someone who has demonstrated sustained, outstanding service … in mentoring women in the advancement of women in the practice of international law.”

Lewis, cofounder of the law school’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, specializes in public international law. She is the coauthor of “Human Rights and the Global Marketplace: Economic, Social, and Cultural Dimensions.” She is a past recipient of the U.S. Human Rights Network’s Notable Contributions to Human Rights Scholarship Award and is active in a number of international domestic human rights and social justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Lewis has served as a member of the executive council of the American Society of International Law, director on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and as a member of the Society of American Law Teachers Board of Governors.

Her research appointments have included a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellowship at Harvard University’s Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, and visiting fellowships at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and at Washington College of Law, American University. Prior to joining the law faculty in 1991, Lewis practiced in the area of domestic and international investment funds, served as a fellow with TransAfrica, a human-rights NGO, and was an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The award will be presented on April 20, 2012, at an ABA event in New York City.

Earlier this year, Lewis, who is legally blind, was also named Employee of the Year by the Carroll Center for the Blind and the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind for her work as an international law and human rights teacher and scholar.

View selected publications of Hope Lewis in IRis, Northeastern’s digital archive.