Adriaan Lanni, the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has received a 2017 Guggenheim fellowship, an award that honors exceptionally impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Lanni, whose research focuses on law and society in classical Athens, will use her Guggenheim Fellowship term to complete a book entitled “Crime and Justice in Democratic Athens.”
In early April, the board of trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of 173 Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of scholars, artists, and scientists. Considered on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-third competition.
“These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation. “Each year since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue to do so with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”
“Adriaan’s scholarship is superb and she could not be more deserving of this prestigious award,” said Dean Martha Minow. “One of the world’s leading experts on the legal systems of Classical Rome and Greece, Adriaan masterfully illuminates how those ancient systems can inform modern legal doctrine and institutional design. It is terrific to see the recognition and support offered by Guggenheim Foundation for her groundbreaking work.”
Lanni’s teaching and scholarship combine her expertise in both criminal law and ancient legal history. At Harvard Law School, she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Adjudication, and the Criminal Justice Workshop, as well as a variety of legal history courses on ancient Greek and Roman law.
In October, on the occasion of her appointment as the Touoff-Glueck Professor of Law, Lanni delivered a lecture titled, “Why Study Athenian Law? Adventures in Institutional Design,” that discusses what modern lawyers and democratic citizens can learn from ancient Athens.
Her publications include “Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens,” and the just published “Law and Order in Ancient Athens,” as well as several articles on ancient law and the modern criminal jury.
Before joining Harvard Law School in 2005, Lanni was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Dana Fabe of the Alaska Supreme Court. She received a B.A., summa cum laude, in Classical Civilization from Yale University, an M.Phil. in Classics from Cambridge University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan.
Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted more than $350 million in fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Turing Award winners, poets laureate, members of the various national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and other important, internationally recognized honors.