Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation to rename New York City’s famed 59th Street Bridge after Ed Koch ’48, the city’s 105th mayor, on April 11, 2011.

In accepting the award in April, Dean Richard Revesz said, “SEO’s mission aligns with the Law School’s longstanding commitment to supporting students from all backgrounds, in order to create more diverse classrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, law firms, and public and private institutions.” Founded in 1963, SEO offers educational and career programs to hundreds of high school and college students and young professionals annually. The Law School’s association with SEO began when Peggy Cooper Davis, John S.R. Shad Professor of Lawyering and Ethics, adapted NYU Law’s acclaimed Lawyering Program to train SEO interns during the summer.

At the awards presentation, Revesz noted that a variety of programs at the Law School share the same objective, including TRIALS (Training and Recruitment Initiative for Admission to Leading Law Schools), a partnership with Harvard Law School and the Advantage Testing Foundation to assist college students from underrepresented communities who are interested in going to law school, and the AnBryce Scholarship Program, which provides full-tuition scholarships to outstanding J.D. students who are among the first in their family to pursue a graduate degree. “I truly believe in this approach to education,” Revesz concluded, “and I am thrilled that NYU can help make a difference through programs like yours.”

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Weiler’s legal odyssey began after a review of Karin Calvo-Goller’s The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court: ICTY and ICTR Precedents appeared on a book review website he edits. Unhappy with the review, Calvo-Goller asked that it be removed. When Weiler declined, Calvo-Goller, a French citizen living in Israel, filed a criminal complaint in France against him.

Aside from the author’s nationality, the only French connection was that the review could be accessed online in France. Experts feared that a guilty verdict could have made anything published online a potential target for criminal prosecution, producing a chilling effect on freedom of expression worldwide. In its March ruling for Weiler, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris characterized the lawsuit as forum shopping and deemed the review legitimate criticism. Following the verdict, Dean Richard Revesz said, “We are so proud of our remarkable colleague, who stood firm for the cause of intellectual freedom.”

Later that month in Strasbourg, Weiler was rewarded for standing up in support of another freedom: Italy’s right to display crucifixes in public classrooms. Weiler had argued the case pro bono the previous June. In a decision Weiler characterized as “a rejection of a one-size-fits-all Europe,” the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Italy. “Europe,” Weiler said, “is special in that it guarantees at the private level both freedom of religion and freedom from religion but does not force its various peoples to disown in its public spaces what for many is an important part of the history and identity of their states.”

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The $100,000 prizes were created this year to mark the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary. “Through these awards, we want to highlight the unheralded work of thousands of courageous leaders whose lives are devoted to improving systems and institutions so that all people have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives,” said Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation. “These 12 individuals represent the courage, commitment, and innovative thinking of all the remarkable people who work on the frontlines of social change.”

The globally dispersed honorees include a Peruvian indigenous women’s rights leader and a Kenyan political cartoonist. Stevenson was recognized for “challenging the injustice of poverty” through his scholarship and clinical teaching at NYU Law as well as his leadership of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit organization he founded to provide legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system. Stevenson has been particularly active on behalf of death-row inmates and children sentenced to life without parole. Acknowledging the award in a statement, Stevenson said he would use the monies to continue EJI’s efforts, adding, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth—it’s justice.”

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Miller’s service to the United Kingdom includes his 2010 gift of more than 1,800 Japanese woodblock prints by 19th-century artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi to the American Friends of the British Museum. For more than 20 years, he also moderated Hypotheticals, a series of high-level panel discussions aired on the BBC, modeled on the PBS Fred Friendly dialogues Miller moderated in the U.S.

More important is the question of what to call him. “I am one rank in the Order below knighthood, so ‘Sir’ is inappropriate,” says Miller. “I am two ranks above the Beatles as a group, however.”

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“Richard Epstein’s contributions to his students’ understanding of so many areas of the law are immeasurable,” said Michael Grebe, president and chief executive officer of the foundation. “His research, teaching, and writing have brought clarity to the law and have helped to advance freedom.”

The Bradley Foundation’s mission is to support limited government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual, and cultural activity; and the defense of American ideas and institutions.

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