Thursday, October 23, 2025
Virginia Holocaust Museum
2000 East Cary Street, Richmond
About the Event
The Virginia Law Foundation and the Virginia Holocaust Museum are celebrating the Rule of Law and honoring two outstanding citizen lawyers who have devoted their careers to advancing it.
A primary lesson of the Holocaust is the centrality of the Rule of Law in the preservation of civil societies. Established by the Virginia Holocaust Museum’s Nuremberg Courtroom Committee and the Virginia Law Foundation, this program honors individuals whose life and work emulate the highest ideals enshrined in the principles of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and later the International Court of Justice.
This year’s luncheon event will also feature a continuing legal education seminar by Virginia CLE. Professor A.E. Dick Howard, Warner Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law Emeritus at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Professor Charles Barzun, Joel B. Piassick Research Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Legal and Constitutional History at UVA, will present an hour-long lecture and serve as the event’s keynote speakers. 1.0 MCLE credit is anticipated.
Registration is now open, and while the luncheon is complimentary, tax-deductible contributions in celebration of this event and the award recipients are suggested. Attorneys seeking MCLE credit for the program may register to attend either in person or via live webcast for a $75 fee.
Celebrate citizen lawyers and the Rule of Law
Explore our sponsorship opportunities at this link, or contact Katie Arata at karata@vacle.org to learn more.
Bronze Sponsors
Darrel Tillar and Carroll A. Mason
Stephen E. and Louise Noona
Event Schedule
11:00 a.m.: Doors open
11:30 a.m.: Welcome remarks and luncheon
12:00 p.m.: “The Rule of Law in a Time of Stress” by University of Virginia Professors A.E. Dick Howard and Charles Barzun (1.0 MCLE anticipated)
1:00 p.m.: Presentation of the Awards
1:30 p.m.: Event concludes
Our Vision for the Rule of Law
As this great nation approaches its 250th anniversary, let us hold fast to the core values that have endured and preserved our precious union. For over two centuries, we, as a nation, have protected and preserved freedom by the adherence to a simple but powerful principle: the Rule of Law. A guiding principle that, by definition, is neither political nor partisan. For as our Founders recognized, “men are not angels” and to guard against the evil of self interest, all rights must be secured and guaranteed by one overarching right: A disciplined adherence to a set of laws fairly and evenhandedly administered to all regardless of station in life.
For more than 50 years, this enduring principle has formed the cornerstone of the Virginia Law Foundation’s philanthropic efforts. The Foundation has spent untold hours and invested millions of dollars fostering a respect for and promoting a better understanding of this invaluable guarantee of freedom throughout Virginia. Our vision succinctly underscores the foundational importance of this guarantee as we tirelessly seek: A Virginia legal system that is accessible, affordable, and fair for everyone; where the law is applied impartially by an independent judiciary; and where legal education equips attorneys to be skilled practitioners and ethical advocates for their clients and teaches the public about the American legal system.
Today, as it has for every day of the last 50 years, the Virginia Law Foundation celebrates and reaffirms its support for the Rule of Law. For it is only through a conscious adherence to and support for this vision of the Rule of Law that Virginia will gain the true freedoms promised by the genius of this guiding principle.
The Honorable J. Michael Luttig: The Rule of Law Award
Judge Luttig served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years, from 1991 to 2006.
He was Counselor and Special Advisor to The Coca-Cola Company and the Board of Directors of the Coca-Cola Company from January 2021 to January 2025. Prior to joining The Coca-Cola Company, Judge Luttig was Counselor and Senior Advisor to The Boeing Company CEO and The Boeing Company Board of Directors from January 2019 to January 2020 and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Boeing Company from 2006 to 2020.
Before he was appointed to the Federal Bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, he served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel and Counselor to the Attorney General of the United States at the U.S. Department of Justice 1990-1991. He was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1989-1990. He was Assistant Counsel to the President at The White House from 1981 to 1982 under President Ronald Reagan. From 1982 to 1983, he was a law clerk to then-Judge Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1983 to 1985, he served as a law clerk and then Special Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren E. Burger.
Judge Luttig is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Franklin-Templeton Mutual Funds, a Trustee of the National Constitution Center, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Jefferson/Monticello Foundation, a Member of the Board of The Aspen Institute, a Member of the Board of the Society for the Rule of Law, Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Task Force for American Democracy, a Distinguished Fellow of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the University of Virginia School of Law’s Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, a Senior Fellow of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, and a Member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect.
Judge Luttig earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington and Lee University and his law degree from the University of Virginia. He is married to Mrs. Elizabeth Luttig. The couple have two children, Morgan and John.
About the Award
One of the greatest examples of the steadfast adherence to the Rule of Law is the lasting reminder of the great work of the Nuremburg Military Tribunal and the International Court of Justice. Such adherence to the Rule of Law and its principles is fundamental to a free society. In recognition of these tenets, the Rule of Law Award is given to an individual who has faithfully demonstrated such adherence to the Rule of Law, its principles, and high ideals throughout their career and lifetime.
Jeanne F. Franklin: The Civility in the Law Award
Jeanne F. Franklin has had a varied career in law and mediation in different regions of the country. After graduating from Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law, she began practicing law in Detroit, Michigan, at Michigan Legal Services, which was a backup center that handled research, class action, and test cases in support of neighborhood legal services offices. She was specifically responsible for creating a health law program for a Lake Superior Indian treaty fishing rights case whose outcome is still felt today. She next handled class actions and civil rights cases on behalf of members of the Navajo Nation and its healthcare needs while living and working on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. Following those years and her husband’s job move, she worked in the Solicitor’s Office of the US Department of Interior, where she was tasked with research and writing legal opinions for the Solicitor regarding land and resource rights of American Indian tribes. There she also shaped a program national in scope whereby the Interior Department, in conjunction with the US Department of Justice, could carry out the United States’ fiduciary duty to tribes regarding land and resource claims before expiration of the federal statute of limitations.
Once resettled in Virginia, she entered private practice, primarily in the evolving health law and policy field. Moving into mediation as part of an approach to manage and avert unnecessary conflict became a natural, additional next step that allowed clients and communities could be effectively served.
Finding a legal home in Virginia was facilitated and enhanced by her membership and engagement in the Virginia Bar Association, of which she eventually found herself President, and on the Board of the Virginia Law Foundation (VLF). At the VLF, she was able to serve for six years on the Grants Committee. Under VLF President John Walker, she managed its strategic planning efforts that led to the ongoing affiliation with the Virginia Holocaust Museum and innovative approaches to promoting the Rule of Law and expanded impact giving.
Whether on the VBA health law section council, the Joint ADR Committee council of the VSB and VBA, the VSB Professionalism Course Faculty, the VSB Section Council on The Education of Lawyers, or heading several Virginia legislative study commissions, Jeanne was repeatedly able to see firsthand the unique, outstanding camaraderie and unselfish service of so many Virginia lawyers, judges, and other Virginians. Their professionalism and civility were and are awesome.
Ms. Franklin greatly enjoyed her bar association work with young lawyers, both to encourage during the early 2000s their achieving lifestyle balance as part of a “new professionalism” and more recently seeding their ABA award-winning project to teach civility and communication skills to middle school grades. In 2018, with retirement from legal practice looming and from the perspectives of honing and teaching mediation skills and her further study of human conflict dynamics, she directed her focus to the need to address rising hostilities and divisions in the public square (“The whole country needs a giant mediation!”).
Her last 7 years have included passionate, innovative work with other Virginians and the Special Committee on Issues of National and State Importance to create a multidisciplinary roundtable, VBA at Karsh. This initiative examines and strategizes solutions to the culture of destructive, uncivil civic communications and to introduce, following the roundtable’s work, a Building Bridges movement in Virginia to restore civil civic engagement in all walks of our lives. A culmination of these efforts has been attaining the housing and continuation of civility and Building Bridges education within the Rule of Law and groundbreaking Civics Connects curricula of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC). This melding of subjects has been an ambitious effort and is the work of other outstanding and dedicated professionals. So many deserve the honor and credit for these related efforts. She emphasizes that this work is a long haul, and we must support each other in order to achieve the cultural turnaround toward civility, enthusiastic civic engagement, and upholding the Rule of Law. For these all fit together and undergird sustaining our democratic republic. It is that simple and that hard.
Through the years, Jeanne has received an array of recognitions and awards for her legal work, such as from the US Department of the Interior, the Virginia Bar Association, the Alexandria Bar Association, Legal Services of Northern Virginia, Virginia Lawyers Weekly, Virginia Business, Lawyers Helping Lawyers, and now the VLF. While awards are deeply appreciated, it is always the work and satisfaction from it that are treasured. The teaching and encouragement of others to carry the principles forward must never be forgotten as we seek to implant notions of civility, civic engagement, and the Rule of Law into our daily practice.
About the Award
The Civility in the Law Award is bestowed upon a member of the legal profession in Virginia who throughout their career has evinced the highest ideals of professionalism, courtesy, and civility in their practice or profession. This recognition shall be awarded to a present or former member of the Virginia State Bar (active, associate, or judicial) who has exhibited such attributes as a practicing lawyer, judge, academic, or other legal professional.
