The Association of American Law Schools has named William P. Alford ’77, the Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, as the recipient of the 2026 Section on East Asian Law and Society Jerome A. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes a career of exceptional teaching, service, and scholarship that has profoundly shaped the field of East Asian law and society.
Alford was honored during an event on Jan. 8 during the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The plaque memorializing his recognition reads: “In recognition of Professor Alford’s lifetime of achievement and dedication to the field of East Asian Law as a distinguished scholar, teacher, administrator, mentor, and advocate for the marginalized.”
At the event, former students and current colleagues highlighted Alford’s impact on the field and on those he has taught and with whom he has worked over the decades.
“Bill is unsurpassed in his contributions to the field of Chinese law and [in] his extraordinary support of others — certainly his many former students, present company very much included, but also to many others in academia and in the real world as well,” said Jacques de Lisle ’90, according to prepared remarks. “In Bill’s scholarly work — and his real-world work as well — we see consistent themes of justice and access thereto … from persons with disabilities to victims of environmental harm in China, to China’s often-besieged lawyers to hapless figures caught up in late Qing criminal justice.” de Lisle is now the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law and director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law.
Similarly, in prepared remarks, another former student, Annelise Riles ’93, who is professor of law and anthropology at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she just completed a term as associate provost for global affairs, recalled the important lessons that Alford shared with his countless mentees: “[B]e careful of orthodoxies, of anyone’s claims to moral superiority, recognize that there is good and bad in everyone, and respect them, helping to foster what is good and having patience where there’s room for growth. That’s certainly how Bill treated me. Bill was exceedingly patient, living out his commitment to dignity by listening to us students for hours over dinner at local restaurants even when we probably didn’t know enough to be worthy to be listened to.”
In addition, dozens of Alford’s fellow scholars from around the globe, including several of his former Harvard Law School students now working in the field, contributed to a separate video tribute.
First established in 2022 to honor the field’s pioneers — beginning with Professor Jerome A. Cohen as the inaugural recipient — the Jerome A. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals with at least 20 years of distinguished contributions to East Asian Law and Society. Recipients are recognized for their lasting impact on the legal community and the academy through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and the creation of opportunities for others in the field.
Alford’s career exemplifies these ideals. A leading scholar of Chinese law and comparative law, he served 18 years as vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. Under his leadership, the law school expanded its faculty and curriculum, launched its first international exchange programs, and opened its doors to unprecedented numbers of outstanding law students from around the world.
Cohen, who died this past September, was a longtime professor at Harvard Law School, joining the faculty in 1964 and founding the law school’s East Asian Legal Studies program. In an In Memoriam tribute, Alford described his former teacher and mentor as “an extraordinary figure whose impact both on the larger world and at a personal level was and remains enormous.”
In accepting the award, Alford again paid tribute to his teacher, mentor, and friend. Describing Cohen as “larger than life,” Cohen’s impact, Alford noted, extended far beyond his own scholarship, as he engaged difficult policy issues, vigorously sought to advance human rights, and nurtured a global network of students and colleagues. In that spirit, Alford stressed the importance of both acknowledging China’s achievements while taking full account of its many serious problems, all the while being mindful of one’s own assumptions.
The Jerome A. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award is administered by the AALS Section on East Asian Law and Society, one of the association’s 108 sections organized around key academic disciplines and areas of professional interest. Austen Parrish, AALS president and dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said: “The inspiring individuals recognized this year with section awards are fabulous leaders, teachers, and scholars, and the programs and institutions honored are so well deserving. As we mark the association’s 125th anniversary, it’s appropriate to pause to highlight excellence and leadership in legal education.”
Alford’s work as a scholar, teacher and academic administrative leader has been widely recognized. Of particular note, in 2010, the University of Geneva awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Law and in 2015, the Harvard Law School Association presented him its annual award, with a citation commending his scholarship in Chinese law, his work on disability rights, his being a “law professor par excellence,” and his “visionary leadership” that “represent[s] the best qualities of Harvard Law School.”
In 2019, a leading Chinese academic society, the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, awarded him its annual Li Buyun Prize in recognition of his scholarship and work on disability rights, the stipend for which Alford, in turn, donated to Special Olympics China. The Special Olympics serves individuals with intellectual disabilities in more than 190 jurisdictions around the world.
His books include “To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization” (Stanford University Press 1995), “Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia” (Harvard East Asian Legal Studies 2007), “Falu Baozhang Jizhi Yanjiu (A Study of Legal Mechanisms for the Protection of Persons with Disabilities)” (in Chinese) (Huaxia Press 2008, with Wang Liming and Ma Yu’er), “Prospects for the Professions in China” (Routledge 2011, with William Kirby and Kenneth Winston), and “Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation” (Springer 2019, with Jerome Cohen and Lo Chang-fa), which was awarded the American Society of International Law 2020 Certificate of Merit in a Specialized Area of International Law.
Alford is the founding chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, known as HPOD, which works to foster the dignity of persons with disabilities through cutting-edge scholarship and teaching that informs policy work, which, in turn, enriches the academic endeavor. Over the past two decades, it has produced innovative cross-disciplinary scholarship, pioneered new classroom subject matter at Harvard and across the globe, and advanced novel policy proposals and pro bono advocacy at the international, national, and local levels.
In a 2021 tribute titled “Scholar, Mensch, and Disability Rights Champion,” Alford’s longtime collaborator, Visiting Professor Michael Ashley Stein, HPOD’s co-founder and executive director, wrote that “HPOD has succeeded in no small measure for the same reasons that EALS and international legal studies at HLS have succeeded — because of Bill’s wisdom, generosity, kindness, and devotion. He is an absolutely extraordinary person, and his friendship has been essential to HPOD as well as a great blessing in my life.”
Alford served for nine years as lead director and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors of Special Olympics International. In 2008, Special Olympics honored him for his work for persons with intellectual disabilities in China. He is also the senior adviser for Graduate and International Legal Studies at HLS.
He is a graduate of Amherst College (B.A.), the University of Cambridge (LL.B.), Yale University (graduate degrees in History and in East Asian Studies) and Harvard Law School.
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