Call for Nominations: ASIL Honors and Awards 2027 (Manley O. Hudson Medal, Goler T. Butcher Medal & Honorary Member Award) by the American Society of International Law

The American Society of International Law (ASIL), founded in 1906 and headquartered at 2223 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, confers three annual honors recognising outstanding contribution to international law. The members of the 2026-2027 Honors Committee — Susan Karamanian (Chair), Colleen Graffy, D. Steven Mathias, Patricia Viseur Sellers and Sean Murphy — invite nominations, including self-nominations, for the honors to be conferred in 2027.

Honorees are selected by the Society’s Executive Council on the recommendation of the Honors Committee, and the honors are presented each year at the Society’s Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

• The Manley O. Hudson Medal — awarded to a distinguished person of American or other nationality for outstanding contributions to scholarship and achievement in international law.
• The Goler T. Butcher Medal — awarded to a distinguished person of American or other nationality for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights.
• The Honorary Member Award — conferred on an individual of American or other nationality who has rendered distinguished contributions or service in the field of international law.

Past recipients of the Hudson Medal include Philip C. Jessup, Rosalyn Higgins, Stephen M. Schwebel, James R. Crawford, Antony Anghie and Joseph H. H. Weiler; the Butcher Medal has previously gone to figures including Thomas Buergenthal, Asma Jahangir, Dinah Shelton and Gay McDougall. The full list of past recipients is set out in the Society’s Regulation on the Honors Committee.

All three honors are expressly open to a distinguished person of American or other nationality, so scholars, practitioners, judges and human rights advocates based in India and elsewhere outside the United States are eligible to be nominated and to nominate. The Society’s Regulation on the Honors Committee records that, until 2015, the Honorary Member Award was permitted to be given only to a non-American; that restriction no longer applies.

There is no stated requirement that the nominator or the nominee hold ASIL membership. Both third-party nominations and self-nominations are accepted.

Nominations are made on the online form hosted on the ASIL Honors and Awards page. The form asks for:

• The award type being nominated for (the Manley O. Hudson Medal, the Goler T. Butcher Medal, or the ASIL Honorary Member Award).
• The nominee’s name (first and last), email address and title/organization.
• The name of the person submitting the nomination.
• A statement in support of the nomination, which is a required field.
• A biography or CV of the nominee, which may be uploaded as a file and is strongly encouraged.

The form also carries a “Support By Email” option for letters of support. JavaScript must be enabled in the browser for the form to load.

Go to the official ASIL Honors and Awards page, scroll to the “Submit a Nomination” form, select the award type, complete the nominee and nominator fields, enter the statement in support of the nomination, attach the nominee’s biography or CV, and submit. There is no nomination fee.

The Society directs all questions about the honors to its awards and honors desk, whose address is given in the contact section below.

The ASIL Honors and Awards page states that the deadline for nominations is August 15. The Honors Committee then makes its recommendations to the Society’s Executive Council, which selects the honorees, and the honors are presented at the Society’s next Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

Note that the same ASIL landing page also carries a separate call for the 2027 ASIL Book Awards, which runs on its own timetable and is not part of this nomination call.