Morgan Lewis
Photo of  Richard N. Gardner

Practice Areas

Honors + Affiliations

U.S. Ambassador to Spain, 1993-1997

U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1977-1981

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1961-1965

Member, State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy

Member, Council on Foreign Relations

Member, International Advisory Board of Grupo Santander

Vice President, American Ditchley Foundation

Bar Admissions

  • New York

Court Admissions

  • U.S. Supreme Court
Print Profile

Richard N. Gardner
Senior Counsel


Email: rgardner@morganlewis.com
New York
101 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10178-0002
Phone: 212.309.6942
Fax: 212.309.6001

Richard N. Gardner is Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School and senior counsel to Morgan Lewis's Business and Finance Practice. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 1977 to 1981 and as U.S. Ambassador to Spain from 1993 to 1997. During his service in Spain, he received the Thomas Jefferson Award for his contributions to U.S. citizens abroad. From 1961 to 1965 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs.

He was a member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) and of the U.S. delegation to the Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization held in Seattle at the end of 1999. He is currently a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy.

Professor Gardner earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A. in economics from Harvard University. His Oxford thesis, published by the Oxford University Press as Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, has been described as the "classic" study of Anglo-American economic collaboration in the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions and GATT.

He is the author of four other books on international affairs, including In Pursuit of World Order: US Foreign Policy and International Organization. His latest book, Mission Italy: On the Front Lines of the Cold War, was published in Italian in September 2004 by Mondadori and in English in September 2005 by Rowman & Littlefield.

He is also the author of numerous articles in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. In 1992 the Council on Foreign Relations published his booklet entitled Negotiating Survival: Four Priorities After Rio.

Professor Gardner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Grupo Santander of Spain and Vice President of the American Ditchley Foundation.

In 2000, Professor Gardner served as a public delegate to the 55th “Millennium” United Nations General Assembly. He served as Special Advisor to the United Nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, as he did in 1972 to the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment.

Professor Gardner is married to the former Danielle Almeida Luzzatto, a columnist for the Italian magazine Chi?. The Gardners have two children, Nina Gardner Olivieri, a lawyer and consultant in Rome, and Anthony Laurence Gardner, a former member of the staff of the National Security Council, a lawyer, and currently Executive Director of GE Commercial Finance-Europe in London.