Each year the Green Bag's "special Board of Advisers on good legal writing, which"--the editor tells me--"includes distinguished members from the state and federal judiciaries, private law firms, the news media, academia, and elsewhere," compiles an annual list of outstanding legal writing from the past year, to be published in the forthcoming Green Bag Almanac & Reader 2011.
The entire list, together with information on the Almanac, is here. Historical recipients include:
Books
John H. Langbein, Renee Lettow Lerner & Bruce P. Smith, History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions (Wolters Kluwer 2009)
Martha Minow, In Brown’s Wake (Oxford University Press 2010)
Jack Rakove, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2010)
Short Articles
Barbara Babcock, "Clara Shortridge Foltz," in Roger K. Newman, ed., The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (Yale University Press 2009)
I'll also note, in the News and Editorial category, a lovely appreciation of my Georgetown colleague Martin Ginsburg:
Nina Totenberg, Martin Ginsburg’s Legacy: Love of Justice (Ginsburg), Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR, July 2, 2010
