2025 ABILA Award Winners
Each year at International Law Weekend, the American Branch honors members and others in the international law community who have demonstrated exceptional service to the Branch and individuals who have greatly contributed to the field of international law.
ABILA Outstanding Achievement Award
The ABILA Outstanding Achievement Award was established to recognize outstanding contributions in the field of international law. Such contributions might include, but are not limited to service to an international organization, a State, or an international court or tribunal; or to teaching, research, or scholarship in the field of international law. While candidates are reviewed comprehensively, factors considered may include consideration of an individual’s specific extraordinary service initiatives and/or sustained superior contributions to the field of international law over a number of years, as well as visionary and innovative leadership.
2025 Recipient: Brenda Hollis
Brenda Hollis is currently serving as Principal Trial Lawyer (D-1 level), Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, in which capacity she leads the investigation into possible international crimes committed in Ukraine, reporting directly to the ICC Prosecutor. Prior to assuming her duties with the ICC OTP, Ms. Hollis served as the International Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia from July 2019 until July 2022, having been the Reserve International Co-Prosecutor from April 2015. Prior to her appointment as the ECCC’s International Co-Prosecutor, she was the Prosecutor of both the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2010–2019). After serving as a legal consultant to the SCSL Prosecutor in 2002, 2003 and 2006, in February 2007 she became lead prosecutor in the case against former Liberian President, Charles Taylor and continued to lead the prosecution of that case until the appeal was concluded in 2013.
From 1994 to 2001, Ms. Hollis held various positions in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, including that of Co-Counsel in the Duško Tadić case, the first litigated case in an international criminal tribunal since the Nuremberg trials, lead prosecutor in both the reopening of the Furundžija case, in which rape was charged as torture, and the preparatory stage of the case against former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Ms. Hollis has trained judges, prosecutors, and investigators in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Iraq. She also assisted victims of international crimes in Colombia and in the Democratic Republic of Congo to prepare submissions requesting investigations by the International Criminal Court. Before entering the international arena, Ms. Hollis was a US Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, and served as an officer in the US Air Force, initially as an Air Intelligence Briefing Officer and then as a Judge Advocate, the latter primarily as a prosecutor at the trial and appellate level, retiring with the rank of Colonel.
Charles Siegal Distinguished Service Award
The Charles Siegal Distinguished Service Award was established by the ABILA Board of Directors in 2020 to recognize outstanding contributions to the Branch by a member of the ABILA. Contributions may include to the ABILA Board, ABILA Committees, and/or the ABILA’s International Law Weekend. In choosing the recipient, the Selection Committee may consider an individual’s specific extraordinary service initiatives and/or sustained superior contributions to the ABILA over a number of years.
2025 Recipient: Houston Putnam Lowry
Houston Putnam Lowry is ABILA’s longstanding Treasurer with over 20 years of experience with the American Branch. Since becoming our incredibly consistent Treasurer, Houston has transformed the financial present and future of the organization. He is a key feature at every ABILA event, always happy to help and provide a smile. Houston has taken on various roles with ABILA, including serving as the first Webmaster, Chair of the International Commercial Law Committee, and ABILA Secretary. Outside of his work with the ABILA, Houston is a Partner with Ford & Paulekas, LLP in Connecticut and has worked on projects at the American Law Institute since 1989. Through this honor, we acknowledge Houston Putnam Lowry’s outstanding and generous dedication to the efforts and achievements of ABILA over many years, for which he fully deserves our gratitude, esteem, and sincere respect.
ABILA Book Awards
The ABILA Book Awards were established to recognize the best books on international law published by ABILA members. Eligible books must have been published within the calendar year of nomination or the preceding calendar year. The subject matter of the book must fall into the broadly defined category of international law.
The Book Awards Committee is proud to offer four separate awards:
– ABILA Book of the Year Award: Awarded each year to the best book published on international law or a topic in international law.
– ABILA Practitioners Book Award: Awarded each year to the best book published on a technical topic in international law or on a topic likely to be of particular interest to practitioners of international law.
– ABILA New Authors Book Award: Awarded each year to the best first book published on international law or a topic in international law by an author who has not previously published a book on this or any other subject.
– ABILA Edited Volume Award: Awarded each year to the best edited volume published on international law or a topic in international law.
2025 ABILA Book of the Year Award: José E. Alvarez and Judith Bauder, Women’s Property Rights Under CEDAW (OUP, 2024)
The gender gap with respect to wealth and property is a chasm. For over 40 years, the leading international treaty body on women’s rights, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the CEDAW Committee), has been generating jurisprudence interpreting CEDAW’s obligations that states protect the equal rights of women in relationships; family rights, including inheritance; rights to land, adequate housing, financial credit, social benefits, intellectual property, and other economic rights dependent on equal access to justice.
This book uses the CEDAW Committee’s own texts: its General Recommendations, Views in response to communications, Concluding Observations in response to State reports, and Reports on Inquiries. The book finds that CEDAW’s vision of what it means for women to have equal rights to property is dramatically different from what many scholars consider to be the leading source of “the international law of property,” namely the case law generated on behalf of foreign investors’ property under the international investment regime. CEDAW’s vision is also more far-reaching and nuanced than the gender equality approaches followed by global financial institutions like the World Bank, whose gender equality rhetoric exceeds its actual on-the-ground development efforts.
Authors: José E. Alvarez is the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law. Judith Bauder is a Researcher with the European University Institute’s Department of Law in Florence, Italy.
2025 ABILA Practitioners Book Award: Michael Wood and Omri Sender, Identification of Customary International Law (OUP, 2024)
Customary international law remains a central source of international law and the core of the international legal system. It continues to draw the attention of lawyers, especially at a time marked by the great expansion of international law and its increasing application in domestic and international courts. Determining whether an applicable rule of customary international law exists is therefore of great practical concern – but this important legal task is not always simple or straightforward.
This book serves as guidance to those seeking to determine the existence of rules of customary international law and their content. It elaborates on the methodology for the identification of rules of customary international law and examines a host of questions concerning the process and evidence involved. It does so by complementing the authoritative work of the UN International Law Commission on this topic, and by drawing upon a wealth of additional practice and writings.
Authors: Sir Michael Wood KC is a Barrister with 20 Essex Street Chambers. Omri Sender is a Partner and Chair of the Public International Law Practice Group with S. Horowitz & Co.
2025 New Authors Book Award: Erin Pobjie, Prohibited Force: The meaning of “Use of Force” in International Law (CUP, 2024)
Prohibited ‘use of force’ under article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law has until now not been clearly defined, despite its central importance in the international legal order and for international peace and security. This book accordingly offers an original framework to identify prohibited uses of force, including those that use emerging technology or take place in newer military domains such as outer space. In doing so, Erin Pobjie explains the emergence of the customary prohibition of the use of force and its relationship with article 2(4) and identifies the elements of a prohibited ‘use of force’. In a major contribution to the scholarship, the book proposes a framework that defines a ‘use of force’ in international law and applies this framework to illustrative case studies to demonstrate its usefulness as a tool for legal scholars, practitioners and students.
Author: Erin Pobjie is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Essex Law School and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.
2025 ABILA Edited Volume Award: Alejandro Chehtman, Alexandra Huneeus, and Sergio Puig, Latin American International Law in the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2025)
Latin America has been a pivotal site for influential and innovative developments in international law since the colonial era. Throughout much of the twentieth century, Latin American politics were entangled with the political and economic interests of the United States. Today, as the global order shifts, scholars and legal practitioners are grappling with the current restructuring and potential transformation of international relations—and what this means for international law in the region.
This collection of essays brings together a group of highly regarded scholars to present a broad survey of Latin America’s approaches and contributions, historically and presently, to the field of international law.
Editors: Alejandro Chehtman is Dean and Professor of Law, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina, and Executive Director of the Latin American Society for International Law. Alexandra Huneeus is Evjue Bascom Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sergio Puig is Chair in International Economic Law at the European University Institute and Evo DeConcini Professor of Law at UArizona.
