Mary Ann Glendon

Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard UniversityMary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.  

She writes and teaches in the fields of human rights, comparative law, constitutional law and political theory.  Her most recent book, The Forum and the Tower:  How Politicians and Philosophers Have Imagined the World, was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press.  In 2008, her book of essays, Traditions in Turmoil, won both the International Capri-San Michele Prize and the Premio Capalbio.  Her history of the framing of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001) was described by the New York Times reviewer as the definitive study of that historic achievement.

Glendon is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative law, and is a past president of the UNESCO-sponsored International Association of Legal Science.   She served on the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002-2005. 

She has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities including the Universities of Chicago and Louvain, and is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.  She received her Bachelor of Arts, Juris Doctor, and Master of Comparative Law degrees from the University of Chicago.