Monday, November 10, 2014

Preyer Prizes to Ablavsky, Belt

It's always a pleasure to spread the word about the winners of the ASLH's annual prizes and fellowships. We'll run posts all week spotlighting the winners. I'll start with a personal favorite: the Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar Award.

About the award:
Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to young legal historians, the program of Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars is designed to help legal historians at the beginning of their careers. At the annual meeting of the Society two younger legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society.
Gregory Ablavsky (credit)
Gregory Ablavsky, for the paper "Species of Sovereignty: The Law of Nations and the Early American Origins of Indian Law," and Rabia Belt, for the paper "Ballots for Bullets? The Disenfranchisement of Civil War Veterans."

Gregory Ablavsky is the Sharswood Fellow in Law and History at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. He obtained his law degree from Penn in 2011 and is working towards his Ph.D. in History. He is currently working on a dissertation titled "Federal Ground: Sovereignty, Property, and the Law in the U.S. Territories, 1783-1803" (Michael Zuckerman, Chair). An extended version of his paper is forthcoming in Volume 124 of the Yale Law Journal.

Rabia Belt is a Researcher at Georgetown University Law Center. She received her J.D. from the University of Michigan in 2009 and is currently working towards her Ph.D. in American Studies, also at Michigan. Her dissertation is titled "Disabling Democracy in America: Disability, Citizenship, Suffrage, and the Law, 1830-1920" (Phil Deloria, chair).
Rabia Belt (credit)

Ablavsky and Belt presented their papers this past Saturday at the Kathryn T. Preyer Prize Panel and received generous comments from Dan Hulsebosch (New York University) and John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School). Gautham Rao (American University) chaired the panel.

The 2013 competition for Preyer Scholars was organized by the Society's Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee:
Gautham Rao, Chair, American University
Sam Erman, University of Southern California
Serena Mayeri, University of Pennsylvnia
Michael A. Schoeppner, University of Maine, Farmington
Karen Tani, University of California, Berkeley
Congratulations to the winners!