The American Society for Legal History
Seeks Nominations for the Cromwell Prizes 2007
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards annually a $5000 prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American Legal History by a junior scholar. The prize is designed to recognize and promote new work in the field by graduate students, law students, and faculty not yet tenured. The work may be in any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies, but scholarship in the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference. The Foundation awards the prize on the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History. The prize has been renamed this year "the Cromwell Book Prize."
The Cromwell Book Prize, even without the name "book" in it, has had a tendency to go to "first books." Although dissertations and student-written articles (e.g., in law reviews) were eligible for the prize, two successive committees felt that such works did not stand much of chance of winning the prize when faced with the competition of a substantial monograph. The Cromwell Foundation agreed, and this year has generously offered to fund a $2500 prize for dissertations accepted or student articles written in the previous year (i.e., 2006) in the general field of American legal history (broadly conceived), with some preference for those in the area of early America or the colonial period.
Anyone may nominate works for the prizes. The Committee will accept nominations from authors, dissertation advisors, presses, or anyone else. Nominations for this year’s prizes should include a curriculum vitae of the author and be accompanied by a hard copy version of the work (no electronic submissions, please) sent to each member of the committee and postmarked no later than July 15, 2007:
Professor Tony Freyer, Chair
University Research Professor of History and Law
306 Law Center
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0382
Professor Barbara Aronstein Black
George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History
Columbia Law School
435 West 116th St.
New York, New York 10027-7297
Professor Holly Brewer
History Department
North Carolina State University
350 Withers Hall, Campus
Box 8108
Raleigh, NC 27695-8108
Professor Cornelia H. Dayton
Associate Professor History
University of Connecticut
241 Glenbrook Road
Storrs, CT 06269-2103
Professor Philip Hamburger
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law
Columbia Law School
435 West 116th St.
New York, New York 10027-7297
Professor Charles W. McCurdy
Professor of History and Law
Randall Hall, P.O. Box 400180
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904
Professor Richard Ross
Professor of Law and History
University of Illinois College of Law
504 E. Pennsylvania Avenue
Champaign, IL 61820
More information about the Cromwell Prizes may be found on the Society’s website, here.
