Karinna Moskalenko, founder of Moscow’s International Protection Centre and a member of the Khodorkovsky legal defense team, received the prestigious 2008 William J. Brennan, Jr. Award this week at a ceremony at the Rutgers University Law School in Camden, N.J., USA.

The award is presented each year to a non-American lawyer or judge “who has made a notable contribution toward establishing or defending human rights and the rule of law.”

This year’s award was presented to Ms. Moskalenko by William Butler, chairman emeritus of the International Commission of Jurists and former general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Butler called Ms. Moskalenko “one of the most outstanding lawyers in the world working on behalf of individual liberty and human rights.” The award itself was inscribed to Karinna Moskalenko “in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to human rights, the rule of law, and the promotion of justice in Russia.”

Standing before an audience of eminent lawyers and jurists, among them the dean of the Rutgers Law School, Rayman Solomon; Roger Clark, a distinguished practioner and scholar of international human rights law; and two U.S. federal court judges, Ms. Moskalenko said justice in Russia was ever more difficult to obtain, especially in politically sensitive cases of the kind which challenge official government policy and/or the “managed democracy” instituted by the Kremlin since 2000.