Shortly before his death in 1993, Lewis gave Harvard Law School the largest grant by an individual, up to that time, in the school’s history. The Law School’s International Law Center was renamed in his honor. Among other programs, the Foundation grant supports fellowships that teach minority lawyers to be law professors.

The RFL International Law Center is home to the International Legal Studies Library and contains one third of the Law Library’s international law collection. It also houses the Graduate Program where approximately 150 lawyers and scholars from around the world come to pursue LL.M or S.J.D. degrees, or to conduct research and write. The Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center is the first major facility at Harvard named in honor of an African American.