Georgetown University Professor Robert Drinan, S.J. is First Recipient of Distinguished Service Award

Robert F. Drinan, S. J., has received the first-ever Distinguished Service Award of the American Bar Association Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities. The award recognizes an individual whose sustained and extraordinary commitment to the section has advanced its mission of providing leadership to the legal profession in protecting and advancing human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.

"Robert Drinan has epitomized the meaning of the Section's role in ensuring liberty, equality of opportunity, social justice, and human dignity for all people. He has influenced generations of lawyers by word and example and continues to inspire students to give the best of their minds and hearts to the rule of law. He is a treasure to the legal profession and the nation," said Greco.

A founding member of the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, Drinan served as Section chair in 1990-91 and section delegate to the ABA House of Delegates from 1993 to 1996. Formerly Dean of Boston College Law School and currently a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Drinan is known and revered throughout the ABA for his service to the bar in many capacities, including as chair of the Section of Family Law, the Standing Committee on World Order Under Law, and, most recently, the Standing Committee on Professionalism.

Within the legal profession and beyond, Robert Drinan also is known as a dedicated and principled former congressman from Massachusetts, a widely published legal scholar and author, and a respected human rights advocate repeatedly called upon by U.S. presidents and diplomats.

He has received honorary degrees from more than 20 prestigious universities. His service to human rights has included participation in official congressional delegations to Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, and Japan, as well as private delegations to the Netherlands, South Africa, Sudan, Israel, and the Soviet Union, and privately-sponsored human rights missions to Chile, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, France, and Vietnam.