April 2, 2026

Henry N. Butler Receives the William R. Rakes Leadership in Education Award

Henry N. Butler, the Henry G. Manne Chair in Law and Economics and chairman of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, is named this year’s recipient of the William R. Rakes Leadership in Education Award by the Virginia State Bar Section on the Education of Lawyers in Virginia.

The Rakes award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated exceptional leadership and vision in improving legal education and in advancing relationships and professionalism among members of the academy, the bench, and the bar within the legal profession in Virginia.

For almost 40 years, Butler has developed and led educational programs that teach economics, finance, accounting, statistics, and the scientific method to federal and state judges. He served as dean of George Mason Law School from 2015 through 2020. He achieved unparalleled success, including raising record-breaking gifts, establishing a host of new centers, institutes, and clinics, boosting the law school’s national and international reputation, and naming the school after the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

From 2007 to 2010, Butler served as the first executive director of the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law. He has held prior appointments at the Brookings Institution, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, and the University of Kansas. Butler’s first academic position was as an assistant professor in the Management Department at Texas A&M School of Business. He spent the 1985–86 academic year as a John M. Olin Fellow in Law & Economics at the University of Chicago. From 1986 to 1993, he was a law professor at George Mason, and during that period, he also served as an Associate Dean and Director of the Law & Economics Center. He returned to George Mason Law in 2010.

Butler received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Richmond. He received an MA in 1979 and a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1982, where Professor James M. Buchanan, George Mason University’s first Nobel Laureate in economics, served on his dissertation committee. In 2017, Butler was inducted into the Virginia Tech College of Science Hall of Distinction. As a student at the University of Miami School of Law, Butler was a John M. Olin Fellow at the Law and Economics Center, which had been founded in 1974 by Butler’s mentor, Professor Henry G. Manne. In February 2020, Butler spoke in the University of Miami School of Law Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series.

The award will be presented on Friday, June 5, at the Hilton Oceanfront Hotel during the VSB’s Annual Meeting