The Liberty Medal is an annual award administered by the National Constitution Center

National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center is an organization that seeks to expand awareness and understanding of the United States Constitution and operates a museum to advance those purposes....

 of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 to recognize leadership in the pursuit of freedom. It was originally founded by The Philadelphia Foundation. In 2006 an agreement was made with the National Constitution Center (NCC) that the NCC would take over the organizing, selecting and presenting of the award to recipients. Recipients are now chosen by the NCC and its Board of Trustees.

List of recipients

Year	Name
2011	Robert Gates Robert Gates Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....
2010	Tony Blair Tony Blair Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
2009	Steven Spielberg Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
2008	Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
2007	Bono Bono Paul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...   DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) DATA Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa was a multinational non-government organization founded in January 2002 in London by U2's Bono along with Bobby Shriver and activists from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign....
2006	George H. W. Bush George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...   Bill Clinton Bill Clinton William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
2005	Viktor Yushchenko Viktor Yushchenko Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...
2004	Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
2003	Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She served as an Associate Justice from 1981 until her retirement from the Court in 2006. O'Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981...
2002	Colin Powell Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
2001	Kofi Annan Kofi Annan Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
2000	Dr. James D. Watson James D. Watson James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick...   Dr. Francis Crick Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...
1999	Kim Dae Jung Kim Dae Jung Kim Dae-jung was President of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, and the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He came to be called the "Nelson Mandela of Asia" for his long-standing opposition to authoritarian rule.-Early life:...
1998	George J. Mitchell George J. Mitchell George John Mitchell, Jr., is the former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under the Obama administration. A Democrat, Mitchell was a United States Senator who served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995...
1997	CNN International CNN International CNN International is an international English language television network that carries news, current affairs, politics, opinions, and business programming worldwide. CNN is one of the world's largest news organizations. It is owned by Time Warner, and is affiliated with CNN, which is mainly...
1996	King Hussein   Shimon Peres Shimon Peres GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...
1995	Sadako Ogata Sadako Ogata , is a Japanese academic, diplomat, author, administrator and professor emeritus at Sophia University.-Early life:Sadako Nakamura was born in 1927...
1994	Václav Havel Václav Havel Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
1993	Nelson Mandela Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...   Frederik Willem de Klerk Frederik Willem de Klerk Frederik Willem de Klerk , often known as F. W. de Klerk, is the former seventh and last State President of apartheid-era South Africa, serving from September 1989 to May 1994...
1992	Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
1991	Óscar Arias Sánchez   Médecins Sans Frontières Médecins Sans Frontières ' , or Doctors Without Borders, is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland...
1990	Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
1989	Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity , the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland between 1990 and 95.Wałęsa was an electrician...

External links

• National Constitution Center Official page