Professor Leila Sadat received the Charles R. English Award, which is given to judges, prosecutors, the defense bar, academics, and other attorneys who are members of the American Bar Association (ABA) Criminal Justice Section and have distinguished themselves by their work in the field of criminal justice. The award was presented during the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s 2024 Forensic Science and Information Technology Institute in April.
Professor Sadat is the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at WashULaw and a visiting fellow at the Schell Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School. A devoted teacher and prolific scholar, she is renowned for her expertise in international law, human rights, and international criminal law, publishing more than 165 articles and books in leading journals, academic presses, and media outlets worldwide. Professor Sadat was the first woman to receive the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair. She previously served as the director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute and as the special adviser on crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court prosecutor. She was a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and was recently appointed to the Moscow Mechanism of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Professor Sadat launched the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a ground-breaking project that wrote the world’s first global treaty on crimes against humanity and continues to spearhead global efforts to negotiate this important new treaty at the United Nations. Closer to home, she has been working on a project on gun violence and human rights, recently publishing “Torture in our Schools?” with the Harvard Law Review, which addresses the crisis of mass shootings in U.S. schools.
