The Honorary Degree Committee, which is composed of deans, faculty, and a student, select the Honorary Degree recipients.

John A. Payton,
Former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

John A. Payton will be awarded an honorary degree at the Law Center Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20.   He will receive the first posthumous degree awarded by the Law Center in more than a quarter century.  Gay J. McDougall, former United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues and the former Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Visiting Professor of Human Rights, will serve as Commencement speaker and accept the honorary degree on behalf of Mr. Payton, her late husband.

Mr. Payton served as president and director-counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) from 2008 until his death in March 2012. During his tenure at LDF, Payton guided the organization to legal victories in Lewis v. City of Chicago, in which a group of African-Americans seeking to be firefighters contended that they had properly filed a charge of discrimination against the city, and Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, which challenged the constitutionality of a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Mr. Payton attended Harvard Law School, where he served on the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Review and assisted with high-profile civil rights cases, including the defense of a 1960s NAACP-led boycott of segregationist merchants in Mississippi. He also clerked for Judge Cecil F. Poole of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco before joining the Washington, D.C., firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale).

An honorary degree will also be awarded to Senior Judge Arthur J. Gajarsa of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Judge Gajarsa has served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit since 1997. He has worked for the Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior and Department of Defense. After law school at Georgetown, Gajarsa clerked for Judge Joseph McGarraghy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and spent many years in private practice. He has served as a member of Georgetown University’s board of directors and the Law Center’s board of visitors.

Past Recipients:

2011 Recipient:

Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. C'64 L'67
Partner, Williams & Connolly LLP

Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. is one of the best known and most distinguished trial lawyers in America. The National Law Journal regularly includes him in its list of "America's One Hundred Most Influential Lawyers" and in 2010, it hailed him as one of "The Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade" (2000-2009) in litigation. Mr. Sullivan graduated from Georgetown College in 1964 and from Georgetown Law Center in 1967. After serving as a captain in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1969, he joined his mentor, Georgetown Law alumnus Edward Bennett Williams, at the firm of Williams and Connolly, where he rose to the position of senior partner. He is a founding member and a former chair of the Law Center Board of Visitors.

2010: The Right Honourable Baroness Brenda Hale of Richmond
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom

The Right Honourable Baroness Brenda Hale of Richmond(London) is recognized around the world as a leader in law. In January 2004, she became the first woman to serve in the House of Lords as a "Lord of Appeal in Ordinary," the equivalent of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Last year, Hale and the other "Law Lords" officially became the "Justices" of the new U.K. Supreme Court. A graduate of Girton College, University of Cambridge, in 1966, she practiced at the Manchester Bar and taught law at Manchester University and at King's College. She specialized in several fields, including pioneering work in mental health law, family law and social welfare law. Hale has been a clear and important voice for women's equality, both before and since her appointment to the U.K.'s highest court.