John Sexton and Joseph Weiler to give keynote addresses at NYU Law Convocation

NYU President Emeritus John Sexton will deliver remarks to JD graduates and University Professor Joseph H.H. Weiler will address the LLM class during NYU Law’s 2026 Convocation, Dean Troy McKenzie ’00 announced on April 9. The ceremony will take place on May 19 in the Infosys Theater in Madison Square Garden.

Sexton served as president of New York University from 2001 through 2015. He is the Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law and dean emeritus of the Law School. During his presidency and his deanship, the University’s and the Law School’s reach and stature grew tremendously, including the emergence of NYU as a global network university, with campuses in Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and 12 other academic centers. 

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of 24 honorary degrees, Sexton is past chair of the American Council on Education, the Independent Colleges of New York, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Law Schools, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His numerous awards include the UN Global Coalition’s Award for Education Leadership, the Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence, and the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 2016, he founded and for five years served as CEO of the Catalyst Foundation for Universal Education, providing over $25 million in grants to educate underserved refugee and displaced children around the world.

He is the author of numerous articles, Supreme Court briefs, and books, including Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Court System; Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age; and the NY Times bestselling Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game, based on an undergraduate seminar that he teaches at NYU. 

Sexton clerked for Judges Harold Leventhal and David Bazelon of the DC Circuit and for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court of the United States. He holds an MA in comparative religion and a PhD in the history of American religion from Fordham University. Before earning his JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, he was professor of religion and department chair at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn. 

Joseph Halevi Horowitz Weiler, Joseph Straus Professor of Law at NYU Law, is senior fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and serves as faculty director of the LLM and JSD programs at NYU Law. 

Formerly he served as professor of law at Michigan Law School, the Manley Hudson Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and president of the European University Institute (EUI) Florence. 

He holds a BA from the University of Sussex, an LLB and LLM from Cambridge University, and the Diploma of International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law. He earned his PhD in European law at EUI and is the recipient of 17 honorary doctorates in law, political science and theology from major universities in Europe and the United States. 

He focuses his research and teaching on issues of European integration, international trade, democracy, law and religion as well as the international governance of soccer. Among his noted books are The Constitution of Europe—Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor, which has been translated into 8 languages; Un’Europa Cristiana, which has been translated into 9 languages; and a bestselling novella, Der Fall Steinmann. 

In 2011, representing Italy and eight other countries pro bono, Weiler obtained a landmark ruling from the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights that upheld Italy’s right to display crucifixes in public school classrooms, vindicating his vision of pluralism in a multicultural society. In 2015 he co-founded the International Beit Din, a Jewish religious court, aimed at addressing the problem of Jewish women locked in marriage (agunot) by recalcitrant husbands. Weiler considers this his most significant act in public life. 

Among his civic honors are the awards of the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Italy’s highest civilian honor; Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland; and the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, awarded pre-Orbán. 

Weiler served, inter alia, as a member of the Committee of Jurists of the Institutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, co-drafting the European Parliament’s Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms.

A World Trade Organization and United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement arbitrator, Weiler was a founder and editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, and serves as faculty director and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is co-founder and former president of the International Society of Public Law and of the European Law Unbound Society. 

Among his prizes are the Manley Hudson Medal from the American Society of International Law, the Society’s highest honor, and the Barry Prize for Distinguished Lifetime Intellectual Achievement from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. He was also awarded the Ratzinger Prize by Pope Francis, becoming the first person of Jewish faith to receive the prize.