ABA awards hghest honor to Morris Dees

Morris Dees receives American Bar Association’s highest honor

Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was recognized Tuesday for a legal career dedicated to seeking justice and equality for all when the American Bar Association presented him with the ABA Medal – the organization’s highest award.
Dees, honored during the association’s annual meeting in Chicago, received a standing ovation from the ABA’s House of Delegates, the association’s policymaking body of more than 500 members.
“I am honored and humbled to receive this award from the American Bar Association,” Dees said afterward. “But this award isn’t just about me. It’s also a tribute to the talented SPLC employees dedicated to ensuring that what began as a small civil rights law firm I helped found four decades ago will always be there for the disenfranchised.”
The ABA Medal, which recognizes “exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to the cause of American jurisprudence,” is given only when the ABA Board of Governors determines a nominee “has provided exceptional and distinguished service to the law and the legal profession,” according to the ABA.

SPLC Founder Morris Dees accepts his award from the ABA.

“The presentation of the ABA Medal to Morris Seligman Dees Jr. represents our profound admiration for his personal courage and incomparable leadership as one of the greatest civil rights lawyers of our time,” said outgoing ABA President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III. He said Dees is “an outstanding example of a lawyer who, case by case, is moving our country toward tolerance and equality.”
Previous ABA Medal recipients include Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan Jr. and Sandra Day O’Connor. Other recipients include Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski; Judge Patricia Wald, a member of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and human rights activist the Rev. Robert Drinan.