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In Memoriam Henry J. Richardson III (1941–2025)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2026

Adrien Wing
Adrien Wing*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa College of Law
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Type
In Memoriam
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 120 , Issue 2 , April 2026 , pp. 343 - 345
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of International Law

Henry J. Richardson III, past ASIL Vice President and Honorary Vice President, died on October 5, 2025, at the age of 84. Many regarded him as the “forefather of the Black international law tradition.”

Hank was a scholar, activist, and mentor who transcended borders and championed the rights of the marginalized. My family was linked to Hank through three generations. My parents knew his parents, Henry Jr. and Roslyn when they mutually lived in the segregated Black section of Indianapolis in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hank’s parents were wonderful role models for him in the struggle to achieve equality and justice for African Americans. His dad was a prominent civil rights lawyer, state legislator, and judge, active in many civil rights organizations. His mom was equally involved.

Hank attended Antioch College, where he led civil rights sit-ins. He earned a History Certificate at the Université de Besançon, France. He received his A.B. from Antioch in 1963 and graduated from Yale Law School with his LL.B. in 1966.

Hank then became International Legal Adviser to the government of Malawi following its independence, advising on inherited treaties and various international law issues. In 1968, he was a founding member of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, as well as International Affairs Task Force Chairman and United Nations NGO Representative. In 1969, Hank became Faculty Africanist in Law at the UCLA African Studies Center. In 1971, he earned his LL.M., focusing on international law and development in Africa.

Hank worked in the Carter administration between 1977 and 1979. He served on the National Security Council Staff, specializing in African policy and United Nations matters. He then became Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to the Congressional Black Caucus and a lawyer in the U.S. Department of Defense Office of General Counsel.

Hank made the American Society of International Law (ASIL) central to his professional life. He joined in 1971, when there were almost no Black members, and was very active for more than fifty years. He served as Vice President from 1990 to 1992 and as Honorary Vice President from 1992 to 1994. As an 1986 Executive Council member, he spearheaded the successful effort for the Council to divest ASIL stock in companies invested in apartheid South Africa, alongside the late Howard University law professor Goler Butcher and myself.Footnote 1 Hank co-founded the ASIL Southern Africa Interest Group, and was Co-Director for an ASIL/PAIL/Ford study on Women and Minorities in International Law.Footnote 2 From 1993 to 1998, Hank created and chaired the Butcher Medal Committee.Footnote 3 In 1995, he was ASIL’s official representative to the Annual Meeting of the African Society of International and Comparative Law in Rustenburg, South Africa.

He became the first African American editor of the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) in 2014 and, after serving two terms, became an Honorary Editor. Hank was co-founder of BASIL (Blacks of ASIL) with me and others. In 2016, he was the first American scholar named an ASIL Honorary Life Member. He spearheaded a critical part of the Society’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work, resulting in the publication of what is called the Richardson Report. He consistently participated in the President’s Appeal, receiving recognition from the Society’s president for his longstanding contributions in 2019.

In 1973, Hank started his teaching career as an assistant professor at Indiana University where he was the first Black law professor. He was promoted to associate professor and was also a visiting associate professor at Northwestern.

In 1981, Hank began his forty-year affiliation with Temple University Beasley School of Law when he joined the faculty as an associate professor, becoming a full professor in 1983. He taught International Law, International Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Foreign Policy, and International Organizations. He co-founded Temple’s International and Comparative Law Journal (TICLJ) in 1999.

I met Hank when he was a Temple professor and I was a young law student attending the 1982 National Black American Law Student Association convention, the same year I joined ASIL. This started a forty-year mentorship relationship, and I was pleased to hear from Hank’s widow, Dana, that he considered me his first mentee. My nephew Samora Noguera was Hank’s research assistant at Temple in 2011 and 2012. Samora raved about Hank’s mentoring—countless conversations about the nature of the law, life, and justice, with meticulous supervision of his work.

Temple recognized Hank’s achievements and awarded him the Friel-Scanlan Prize for best faculty scholarship. His work pioneered the interpretation of international law through critical race theory,Footnote 4 and he played an important role in developing Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) theory.Footnote 5 He was a very active scholar,Footnote 6 especially with respect to AfricaFootnote 7 and South Africa,Footnote 8 including publishing in AJIL.Footnote 9 Hank is best known for his pathbreaking book Origins of African American Interests in International Law.Footnote 10 The book illustrates the need to recenter Africans and African Americans in international legal discourse, as well as the necessity of engaging international law in dealing with slavery and the slave trade. Hank became an emeritus professor in 2022.

Hank found time to be involved in various organizations and initiatives. Notably, he was a member of the Commission on Independence for Namibia, making two trips in 1990 to monitor elections in the new nation. He monitored the 1994 South African elections as well. It was my privilege to join Hank in a State Department–funded group that went to Rwanda to assist the Constitutional Commission with a post-genocide constitution.

Hank won many awards in his career, including the AALS Minority Section Clyde Ferguson Award in 2013 for “providing support, encouragement and mentoring to colleagues, students, and aspiring legal educators.” In 2026, the AALS Human Rights Section posthumously awarded him the Nelson Mandela Award for his “exceptional contribution to International Human Rights.”

An extraordinary pioneer, Hank was a man of integrity, as well as a renowned Africanist, educator, scholar, and mentor. He was a devoted friend, brother, and husband. Over a lifetime dedicated to international justice, he left an enduring mark on the legal world and all those touched by him. His example lives on to inspire us all.

References

1 See Henry J. Richardson III, Divestment of the Stock Portfolio of the Society, 81 AJIL 744 (1987).

2 See Henry J. Richardson III et al., Women and Minorities in International Law, 81 ASIL Proc. 519 (1987).

3 See Henry J. Richardson III, African Americans and International Law: For Professor Goler Teal Butcher, with Appreciation, 37 How. L.J. 217 (1994).

4 See Henry J. Richardson III, Dinner and Self-Determination, in Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory 288 (Francisco Valdes, Jerome McCristal Culp & Angela P. Harris eds., 2002).

5 See Makau Mutua, Critical Race Theory and International Law: The View of an Insider-Outsider, 45 Vill. L. Rev. 841 (2000) (discussing TWAIL).

6 The TICLJ published a festschrift for Hank in 2017. See A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Henry Richardson, TICLJ Symposium, Temp. Beasley Sch. L. (Oct. 7, 2016), at https://www2.law.temple.edu/events/richardson/about-henry.

7 See, e.g., Henry J. Richardson, The Danger of Oligarchy Within the Pan-Africanist Authority of the African Union, 13 Transnat’l L. Contemp. Probs. 255 (2003).

8 See, e.g., Henry J. Richardson III, Patrolling the Resource Transfer Frontier: Economic Rights and the South African Constitutional Court’s Contributions to International Justice, 9 Afr. Stud. Q. 81 (2007).

9 See, e.g., Henry J. Richardson III, Constitutive Questions in the Negotiations for Namibian Independence, 78 AJIL 76 (1984); Henry J. Richardson III, The Gulf Crisis and African-American Interests Under International Law, 87 AJIL 42 (1993); Henry J. Richardson & Adrien K. Wing, In Memoriam: Burns H. Weston (1933–2015), 110 AJIL 480 (2016).

10 Henry Richardson III, The Origins of African American Interests in International Law (2008); Rafael A. Porrata-Doria, Jr., The Lawyer as Historian: Professor Henry Richardson and the Origins of African American Interests in International Law, 31 Temp. Int’l & Comp. L.J. 277 (2017) (discussing Richardson’s book).