CARLISLE, Pa. — William E. Butler, the John Edward Fowler Distinguished Professor of Law at Dickinson Law, received the Gold Medal from the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine on March 16 during the Academy's annual meeting in Kharkov. The National Academy’s highest honor, the Gold Medal recognizes meritorious services to Ukrainian law.
Butler is the preeminent authority on the law of Russia and other former Soviet republics and the author, co-author, editor or translator of more than 120 books on Soviet, Russian, Ukrainian and other Commonwealth of Independent States legal systems.
He edits the journal Russian Law, published by the Russian Academy of Legal Sciences; the East European and Russian Yearbook of International and Comparative Law, published by The Vinogradoff Institute; and numerous other scholarly journals. Butler is the editor and translator of the five-volume, prize-winning treatise "The Legal System of Ukraine" (Kyiv, 2013) and of the six-volume "Ukrainian Legal Doctrine" (London, 2015-), of which three volumes have been published. No other post-Soviet legal systems have produced such comprehensive treatises on their respective legal systems.
In addition to completing "Ukrainian Legal Doctrine," Butler is co-editing an “Introduction to the Ukrainian Legal System,” to be published by Wolters/Kluwer in the Netherlands. He is a member of the International Court of Commercial Arbitration in Kiev and lectures frequently at Ukrainian law faculties. In 2012, he was awarded the degree LLD honoris causa by the Kiev University of Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and also became the first foreigner to receive the “For Fidelity to Law” Medal of the Supreme Court of Ukraine.
Butler is the only western jurist to be elected to both Ukrainian academies of sciences: the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1992 and the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine in 2012.