American Academy of Sciences and Letters awards Barry Prize to Joseph Weiler

On November 12 University Professor Joseph H.H. Weiler was awarded a 2025 Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL). The AASL citation praised Weiler’s “distinguished contributions to humanity’s pursuit of social orders that are humane, just, and free.” 

“Bridging jurisprudence, philosophy, political theory, religious studies, and more, Joseph Weiler has helped us explore the age-old question of what law is, and why law matters so much to human identity and community,” the citation said. “His contributions on questions involving human rights, European integration, and international and comparative constitutional law have helped us do justice in ways that respect our individual and communal humanity.”

Weiler, who is Joseph Straus Professor of Law, focuses his research and teaching on issues of European integration, globalization, and democracy, as well as law and religion. He is director of NYU Law’s Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice and former president of the European University Institute (EUI). Weiler served 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 and the Parliament’s input into the Maastricht Intergovernmental Conference. He is a founding editor of the European Journal of International Law, the European Law Journal, and the World Trade Review. Among his books are The Constitution of Europe, Un’Europa Cristiana, and a novella, Der Fall Steinmann. In 2022 he was awarded the Ratzinger Prize by Pope Francis.

Open to scholars across a range of disciplines, the Barry Prize honors 10 recipients each year for work that contributes to “humanity’s understanding and cultivation of the good, the true, and the beautiful,” according to AASL. Honorees become AASL members, and the prize also includes a $50,000 award. Previous recipients have included novelists Sir Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Eugenides, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker, law professor Akhil Reed Amar, and Nobel laureates in science Arieh Warshel, Jennifer Doudna, and Sir David W.C. MacMillan.