Gruber Prize for Justice

Irwin Cotler is a retired Canadian politician who was Member of Parliament for Mount Royal from 1999 to 2015. He served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election. He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in a by-election in November 1999, winning 92% of votes cast.

Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United States. Its yield rate of 87% is also consistently the highest of any law school in the United States.

Patricia Ann McGowan Wald was an American lawyer and jurist who served as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1986 until 1991. She was the Court's first female chief judge and its first woman to be elevated, having been appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. From 1999 to 2001, Wald was a Justice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Thomas Buergenthal was a Czechoslovak-born American international lawyer, scholar, law school dean, and judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He resigned his ICJ post as of 6 September 2010 and returned to his position at The George Washington University Law School where he was the Lobingier Professor Emeritus of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence.

Aharon Barak is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995, and before this as Attorney General of Israel from 1975 to 1978.

Navanethem "Navi" Pillay is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. A South African of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay was the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa. She has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended an additional two years in 2012. In September 2014 Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad succeeded her in her position as High Commissioner for Human Rights. In April 2015, Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Sakena Yacoobi is an Afghani activist known for her work for promoting access to education for women and children. She is the founder and executive director of the women-led NGO Afghan Institute of Learning. For her work, Yacoobi has received international recognition, including the 2013 Opus Prize, the 2015 WISE Prize, the 2016 Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education, and an honorary degree from Princeton University.

Ruth Gavison was an Israeli expert of human rights, professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and recipient of the Israel Prize.

The Gruber Foundation is a philanthropic foundation established by Peter and Patricia Gruber and is based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Its mission is to honor and encourage excellence in the fields of cosmology, genetics, neuroscience, justice, and women's rights, which encompasses three major programmatic initiatives: the Gruber Prizes and the Young Scientists Awards; the Gruber Science Fellowship Program; and the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women's Rights at Yale Law School.

Fali Sam Nariman was an Indian jurist. He was a senior advocate to the Supreme Court of India from 1971 and was the President of the Bar Association of India from 1991 to 2010. Nariman was an internationally recognised jurist on international arbitration. He was honoured with the 19th Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration 2018. He was one of India's most distinguished constitutional lawyers and argued several leading cases. He was the Additional Solicitor General of India from May 1972 to June 1975.

Jerome Joseph "Jerry" Shestack was a Philadelphia lawyer and human rights advocate active in Democratic Party politics who served as president of the American Bar Association (ABA) from 1997 to 1998. He chaired the International League for Human Rights for twenty years, and was appointed the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1979 to 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Shestack was regularly listed on the National Law Journal's list of the 100 most influential U.S. lawyers. He had multiple grandchildren the youngest being Andrew Justice Doss.

The Viasna Human Rights Centre is a human rights organization based in Minsk, Belarus. The organization aims to provide financial and legal assistance to political prisoners and their families, and was founded in 1996 by activist Ales Bialatski in response to large-scale repression of demonstrations by the government of Alexander Lukashenko.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari is an Israeli legal scholar and international women's rights advocate who is known for her work on family law, feminist legal theory, women's rights in international law, and women and religion. She was a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women from 2006 to 2018, and was the committee's vice chair during several terms. She is Professor of Law at the Bar-Ilan University and is the founding Academic Director of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women. She is also involved in international academic collaborations on the theme of women, state, and religion, and participates in international litigations as an expert on Israeli family law.