2022 CLP Award for Global Leadership: Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court 

The Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession is pleased to present its highest professional distinction, the Center on the Legal Profession Award for Global Leadership, to Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, the newly appointed chief justice of the India Supreme Court. Justice Chadrachud, who became chief justice in November 2022, holds an LLM and an SJD from Harvard Law School. He previously served on the Bombay High Court and Allahabad High Court. Before entering the judiciary, he worked for Sullivan & Cromwell, as a senior advocate before the Bombay High Court, and as an Additional Solicitor General of India. 
 
In 2017, Chandrachud delivered the keynote address on the future of the Indian legal profession at “The Corporate Legal Sector’s Impact on India,” an event in Delhi showcasing CLP’s project on Globalization, Lawyers and Emerging Economies. 
 
In bestowing the 2022 award, David Wilkins, CLP faculty director, remarked: “I know how much India, and indeed the world, need Justice Chandrachud’s leadership, particularly on issues such as the mental health and the well-being of lawyers which he spoke about so eloquently at our conference in 2017 – long before the global pandemic placed this issue in the forefront of the profession’s consciousness.”  
 
In receiving this award, Justice Chandrachud will join a select group of past recipients, including Samantha Power (former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations under President Obama and current head of the Agency for International Development), Brad Smith (Vice-Chair and President of Microsoft), the late Vernon Jordan (who throughout his distinguished career served as the President of the National Urban League, Senior Managing Director of Lazard Frères, Senior Partner at Akin Gump, a Member of the Board of Directors for  several Fortune 500 companies, and a close advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), and Kenneth Frazier (Executive Chair and former CEO of Merck).   
 
CLP will honor Justice Chandrachud’s storied career, and everything he has done for the profession and the rule of law in India and around the world, in early 2023.