AALS is honoring the late Professor Charles Ogletree (1953-2023) with the 2024 AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Legal Profession, the association’s highest honor. During his 30 years at Harvard Law School, he became known as a civil rights icon who helped frame the national conversation on criminal justice, discrimination, and reparations. He was a fierce trial lawyer, a dedicated teacher, and an invaluable mentor to a generation of Black attorneys.
A 1978 graduate of Harvard Law School, Professor Ogletree spent the majority of his teaching career at his alma mater before retiring in 2020. He earned a BA and MA in political science from Stanford University. While at Harvard Law, he was editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and on the board of the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Program. He also served as the national chairperson of the National Black Law Students Association. He received his JD in 1978.
His legal career began in Washington, DC where he spent seven years at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, widely considered one of the best public defender offices in the nation. There, he gained a reputation as a legendary trial lawyer and trained a generation of public defenders. He began teaching in 1983 as an adjunct at Antioch Law School, the predecessor of the University of the District of Columbia Law School. His short tenure left an indelible impact: in 1999, he was appointed to the UDC Board of Trustees, and today UDC Law presents an annual Charles J. Ogletree Champion of Justice Award to individuals who exemplify a commitment to public service, diversity, and social justice throughout the United States and abroad.
Professor Ogletree joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1984 as a lecturer and became an assistant professor in 1989. In 1991—before he had been awarded tenure—he took a significant risk when he joined the legal team for Professor Anita Hill during the Senate hearings regarding her allegations of sexual harassment against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. He later said that he felt it was necessary to visibly demonstrate his support as a Black male attorney—just one example in a long career dedicated to reaffirming, either by asserting his presence or by creating space, that people of color and women belong in the legal professions.
Ogletree was appointed the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law in 1998, and continued representing high-profile clients as a trial lawyer throughout his career. Among his most impactful cases was a lawsuit seeking reparations for the survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. A 2001 Race Riot Commission had determined that the white mob who had killed Black residents and destroyed a prosperous Black business district was responsible for the riots, and that the survivors were entitled to reparations. Although the lawsuit seeking the reparations they were owed was ultimately dismissed, Ogletree dedicated his effort to ensuring the country knew the names and stories of the Tulsa survivors.
Professor Ogletree took responsibility for many of Harvard Law’s experiential learning programs. Shortly after joining the faculty, he began leading the school’s Trial Advocacy Workshop, which brought in a network of lawyers and judges to teach students lawyering skills and judgment. He became a faculty director and associate dean for clinical programs, and founded Harvard’s criminal defense clinic, the Criminal Justice Institute.
He began a personal tradition of holding “Saturday School,” where he mentored and supported law students, particularly students of color, and brought experts in law and other fields to campus to discuss issues of justice, race, and equity. His former students and mentees include former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, numerous current and former law school deans, and public servants.
In 2005, Professor Ogletree launched the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Named for the Vice Dean of Howard Law School who mentored Thurgood Marshall and became known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow,” the institute became an organizing force for impactful scholarship, innovative strategic advocacy, coalition building, socially concerned legal education, and community engagement on matters central to civil rights and equal opportunity.
Ogletree retired from Harvard Law School in 2020 after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. He authored, co-authored, or co-edited several important books on race and justice, including Life without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty?; The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class, and Crime in America; The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States; When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice; From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America; and the historical memoir All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education.
Harvard Law School established the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Endowed Chair in Race and Justice in 2017. Ogletree was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by The National Law Journal. He was chairman of the Stanford University Task Force on Minority Alumni Relations, a founding member of the Harvard Law School Black Alumni Association, and received numerous honorary degrees and awards including the NAACP’s Universal Humanitarian Award, the ABA Spirit of Excellence Award, the National Black Law Students Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the City of Boston’s Rosa Parks Civil Rights Award, and more.
Professor Ogletree is the seventh recipient of the AALS Triennial Award. Previous recipients were Kimberlé Crenshaw (University of California, Los Angeles School of Law) in 2021, Michael A. Olivas (University of Houston Law Center) in 2018, Herma Hill Kay (University of California, Berkeley School of Law) in 2015, Derrick Bell (New York University School of Law) in 2012, Guido Calabresi (Yale Law School) in 2009, and Norman Dorsen (New York University) in 2006. The award will be presented during an awards ceremony at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting in January.
About the Award
In 2006, the Association of American Law Schools Executive Committee established the “AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Law,” an honor presented every three years to recognize contributions by a faculty member of an AALS Member Law School.