For Immediate Release
May 25, 2011

Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9037

Barry Carter

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A longtime scholar and policy expert on international law, Georgetown University Law Center Professor Barry E. Carter has been selected as the recipient of the Aptíssimi Award for Academic Excellence from ESADE Law School in Barcelona. The honor will be presented on May 26.

"I deeply admire Professor Barry Carter. His commitment to cooperation between law schools from different legal backgrounds, continents and languages, is remarkable," said ESADE Law School Dean Enric R. Bartlett. "His academic career of teaching and publishing is distinguished. And he has used his outstanding legal knowledge and negotiation skills to contribute to public policy."

Established in 2008, the Aptíssimi Award "recognizes scholars for significant achievements in the field of business law that have served to build bridges between academia and the world of law practice." Previous recipients are Giovanni Iudica of Bocconi University in Milan, Klaus J. Hopt of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and Valentine Korah of University College London.

"I am delighted to be honored by such an outstanding law school," said Carter. "ESADE has done an exceptional job of developing an extensive international and comparative law curriculum and preparing students for the global legal marketplace."

Carter joined the Law Center faculty in 1979. He is an expert in international trade and business, U.S. and international law, national security and foreign policy, and serves as director of Georgetown Law’s Center for Transnational Business and the Law. He teaches frequently in other countries and has visited at Stanford. He also serves on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and as chairman of its Sanctions Subcommittee.

He served for over three years as Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Export Administration during the Clinton administration. In this role, he implemented and enforced a variety of trade and nonproliferation laws. During this time, he also served as U.S. Vice Chair to Secretary of Defense William Perry on bilateral defense conversion committees with Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and other countries to help eliminate nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan and Ukraine and to secure nuclear and other dangerous materials in several countries.

Carter was executive director of the American Society of International Law from 1992 to 1993. He served as senior counsel on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities in 1975. In 1972, he was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A member of Henry Kissinger’s National Security staff from 1970 to 1972, he worked on nuclear arms negotiations and other foreign policy matters. While an army officer, he was a program analyst in the office of the Secretary of Defense. He has also been a trial and appellate lawyer in private practice in California and Washington, D.C.

He has written extensively on international issues and co-authored the widely used casebook, International Law. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Law Institute, the American Bar Association and the American Society of International Law.

About Georgetown University Law Center 

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law, and the faculty is among the largest in the nation. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.