Yesterday, Professor Louis Henkin passed away after a long illness. He was 92.

Henkin had many accomplishments, including as a scholar of international law. A colleague of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Henkin was a “cherished friend” 
as well as a powerful influence on her judicial thinking.

“Countless times, when struggling with a trying case involving a question of constitutional law or international law, I looked to his writings for counsel,” Ginsburg has written. “Lou’s

Prof. Louis Henkin

writings sometimes clarified what the law really is, but other times lucidly developed what the law ought to be.” 
As a tribute at Columbia University highlighted, Henkin “was known for his abiding and unwavering drive to ensure that there was a framework to protect the integrity and dignity of individuals. He advocated universal human rights and made it clear that his views had no borders.”

But for me, he is among the founders of the idea that human rights must have a place within the modern university. In 1978, Prof. Henkin and J. Paul Martin created the Columbia University Center for the Study of Human Rights, building on the work of then-Columbia provost Wm. Theodore de Bary.

In Living Legacies at Columbia (2006), Martin wrote that Henkin “believed that human rights were not just for lawyers – so the new Center’s executive committee included a philosopher and a social worker as well as [Prof.] Henkin.” The center’s goal was to educate students across departments, foster interdisciplinary academic research and share its expertise with leaders, organizations, and universities.

Today, there are dozens of human rights centers and institutes at US universities, among them the one I lead at Duke. I love the fact that Henkin immediately saw that you cannot “silo” rights into law or public policy. While those fields are crucial, human rights transcends disciplinary boundaries and gains much of its relevance and vitality from the arts, humanities and journalism.