It is our pleasure to post news about the prizes and awards announced at last week's meeting of the American Society for Legal History. We'll start with the John Phillip Reid Book Award, "awarded annually 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."
This year's award went to Kate Masur (Northwestern University) for Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2021). Here's the citation from the prize committee:
Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, Kate Masur’s Until Justice Be Done uncovers the long arc of civil rights activism in the North, showing how it arose as distinct from antislavery activism and laid the intellectual and political foundations for the later emergence of the Fourteenth Amendment. Centered in the states, rather than the federal government, this First Civil Rights Movement, she shows, was championed by black activists, who were, in turn, supported, by a range of white allies. Together, they challenged the moral and constitutional illegitimacy of the black codes that were enacted throughout the country (including the North) and that were rooted not only in racism, but also in the widely accepted authority of the state to regulate the poor and others deemed to pose a threat to the social order. Combining insights and methods from political, socio-cultural and legal history, Masur’s clear-eyed account explores both the possibilities and the limits of legal reform, offering lessons that are deeply resonant with our own time.
Congratulations to Professor Masur! And thank you to the members of the selection committee for their service.
-- Karen Tani
