Book Prizes in Anglo-American and American Legal History

Here is a joint announcement of the John Phillip Reid Book Award of the American Society for Legal History and the Cromwell Book Prize of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation.  The Reid Award and the Cromwell Book Prize are mutually exclusive. The Reid Book Award is for a book by a mid-career or senior scholar, and the Cromwell Book Prize is for a “first book” by a junior scholar.  For advice where the distinction is doubtful, please consult Philip Girard, chair of the ASLH Committee on the John Phillip Reid Book Award, and Daniel Ernst, chair of the Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee.

John Phillip Reid Book Award

Named for John Phillip Reid, the prolific legal historian and founding member of the Society, and made possible by the generous contributions of his friends and colleagues, the John Phillip Reid Book Award is an annual award for the best monograph by a mid-career or senior scholar, published in English in any of the fields defined broadly as Anglo-American legal history. The award is given on the recommendation of the Society's John Phillip Reid Prize Committee.

For the 2012 prize, the Reid Award Committee will accept nominations from authors, presses, or anyone else, of any book that bears a copyright date in 2011. Nominations for the Reid Award should be submitted by May 25, 2012, by sending a curriculum vitae of the author and one copy of the book to each member of the committee.  (Committee members and addresses appear after the jump.)

 Cromwell Book Prize

William Nelson Cromwell

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards annually a $5000 book 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, post-doctoral fellows 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 prize is limited to “first books,” i.e., works by a junior scholar that constitute his or her first major undertaking.

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards the prize on the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History. The Committee will consider books published in 2011.  The Society will announce the award after the annual meeting of the Cromwell Foundation, which normally takes place early in November.

To nominate a book, please send copies of it and the curriculum vitae of its author to John D, Gordan, III, Chair of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee, and to each member of the Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee with a postmark no later than May 31, 2012.  (Subcommittee members and addresses appear after the jump.)

John Phillip Reid Book Award Committee

Philip Girard, Chair, James Lewtas Visiting Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, 4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON Canada M3J 1P3 philip.girard@dal.ca

Catharine Macmillan, Reader in Legal History, Department of Law, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom

Sophia Z. Lee, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 3400 Chestnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104

Steven Wilf, Joel Barlow Professor of Law & Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, Law School, University of Connecticut, 65 Elizabeth Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06105

Laura Weinrib, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Law School, 1111 E. 60th St., Room 410 Chicago, IL 60637


Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee

John D. Gordan, III, Chair, Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee, 1133 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10128

Daniel R. Ernst, Chair, Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee, Visiting Professor of Law (2011-12), 411B Vanderbilt Hall, New York University School of Law, 40 Washington Sq. South, New York, NY 10012 ernst@law.georgetown.edu

Laura F. Edwards, Professor of History, History Department, Box 90719, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708

Robert W. Gordon, Stanford Law School, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA 94305

Laura Kalman, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410