CJI to be conferred with ‘Award for Global Leadership’

New Delhi: Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud has been selected for the “Award for Global Leadership” by the Harvard Law School Centre in recognition of his lifetime service to the legal profession in the country and around the world.

The award will be presented to him at an online event on January 11.

Chandrachud obtained an LLM degree and a Doctorate in Juridical Sciences (SJD) from the Harvard Law School in the United States.

At the event, professor David Wilkins of the Harvard Law School will also have a conversation with the CJI.

Justice Chandrachud, who was part of the apex court benches that delivered several landmark verdicts, including the Ayodhya land dispute case, was sworn in as the 50th CJI on November 9, 2022.

Wilkins, CLP faculty director, said: “I know how much India, and indeed the world, need Justice Chandrachud’s leadership, particularly on issues such as the mental health and the well-being of lawyers which he spoke about so eloquently at our conference in 2017 – long before the global pandemic placed this issue in the forefront of the profession’s consciousness.”

Past recipients of the award include Samantha Power (former US Permanent Representative to the United Nations under US President Barack Obama and current head of the Agency for International Development), Brad Smith (vice-chair and president of Microsoft), the late Vernon Jordan (who served as the president of the National Urban League and was a close advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), and Kenneth Frazier (executive chair and former CEO of Merck).

Before his tenure as a Supreme Court judge, Chandrachud served on the Bombay and Allahabad high courts as a judge. Before entering the judiciary, he worked for Sullivan & Cromwell, as a senior advocate before the Bombay High Court, and as an additional solicitor general of India.

With agency inputs