Members of the Georgetown Law community came together October 1 to celebrate the school's commitment to public service and to honor John D. Podesta (L'76) with the 2009 Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Law Alumni Public Service Award. Podesta, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Visitor from Practice at the Law Center, has held numerous positions in government including White House chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton (F'68). Most recently, Podesta served as a co-chair of the transition team for President Barack Obama.

The Drinan award, created in 1996, honors Georgetown Law alumni whose careers enhance human dignity and advance justice. The award was named for the late Father Robert F. Drinan (L'49, LL.M.'51, H'91), who in his 86 years of life built an inspiring career in public service through his roles of priest, U.S. Congressman, Georgetown Law professor, author, scholar, human rights activist and more. Drinan died in 2007.

"Both men share a commitment to conscience, to dedication, to working for justice, to law," said Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia, who presented Podesta with the award. "They saw that success was not in serving the most powerful, but rather in championing those most in need."

In his remarks, Podesta noted that the commitment to public interest is part of what sets a Georgetown Law education apart.

"At Georgetown, we work hard to master not only the nuances of the law, we study how to use the law to reach the higher goal of justice," he said. "In search of that goal, we embrace the unique relationship between centuries of legal tradition and centuries of Jesuitical search for higher truths and true service."

The celebration also highlighted some of the many public interest projects undertaken by the Georgetown Law community last year, work that affected potentially thousands of lives. And it highlighted, too, how much more the Law Center will continue to do with its "Justice Agenda," a new program designed to enhance public-interest clinics and loan repayment assistance, post-graduate fellowships and more.

Assisting in the Justice Agenda are many alumni including April McClain-Delaney (L'89) and John K. Delaney (L'88), whose service and support to the Law Center continue to have far-reaching consequences. They recently created the Delaney Family Professorship in Public Interest Law - bestowed in a September 23 ceremony to Professor Philip G. Schrag - and have established a loan repayment assistance fund in their names for law alumni working in the public interest. They are also providing support for other Justice Agenda initiatives.

"We really should be attracting and training and 'unleashing' as many students as possible who are not only prepared to do public service and public interest work, but want to do it for the right reasons," John Delaney said at the event. "With each student that gets 'unleashed' from a program like this, it really does affect thousands of lives."

And these two initiatives are just the beginning, as Georgetown Law Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff noted. "As we continue to flesh out our 'Justice Agenda,'" he said, "[these gifts] will be the catalyst for some of our new initiatives and will inspire others to join us in our efforts as the leading public interest law school in the nation."

A Webcast can be seen here.

Podesta's remarks can be viewed here.

An overview of public interest and public service programs at Georgetown Law is available here.