Northwestern University School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) will award its second annual Global Jurist of the Year Award to Justice Shireen Avis Fisher, president of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The awards ceremony and an address by Justice Fisher will take place on Monday, Oct. 20. She will deliver an address to the student body at noon in the Rubloff Building, 375 E. Chicago Ave., on the Law School’s Chicago campus. The event will be open to the media.

Justice Fisher was sworn in as a Justice of the Special Court for Sierra Leone on May 4, 2009. She played a key role in the Appeals Chamber judgment delivered in 2013 regarding the conviction and 50-year sentence of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity committed by rebels during Sierra Leone’s civil war.

“The Center for International Human Rights is delighted to present the second annual Global Jurist of the Year Award to Justice Fisher,” said David Scheffer, Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern and director of the Center for International Human Rights. “We are particularly pleased to be selecting an American jurist and a woman of such distinction for the award.

“Justice Fisher worked courageously under conditions, particularly in Sarajevo and Freetown, that entailed the kind of risk sometimes encountered by jurists who examine atrocity crimes in

countries still emerging from hate-filled and bloody conflicts.“

The Global Jurist of the Year Award is designed to honor a sitting judge, whether in an international or national court, who has demonstrated in his or her career courage in the face of adversity to uphold and defend fundamental human rights or the principles of international criminal justice. Jurists from all nations and tribunals are eligible for consideration. Last year, Dikgang Moseneke, deputy chief justice of the South African Constitutional Court, was the first recipient of the Global Jurist Award.