Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition

[We have the following announcement.  DRE] 

The Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section (LHRB) of the American Association of Law Libraries, in cooperation with The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., is conducting its annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition.  Full- and part-time students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs in law, history, library science, or related fields are eligible to enter.  Members of the Class of 2026 are also eligible.  Essays may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives.  Criteria on which papers will be judged include originality of topic or approach, quality and depth of research and analysis, clarity of presentation, and contribution to the field.  The winner will receive a $1,000 prize from The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., and will present the essay at an LHRB sponsored webinar.  The authors of the winning and runner-up essays will have the opportunity to publish their essays in LHRB’s online scholarly journal Unbound: A Review of Legal History and Rare Books.  The Competition electronic submission deadline is 11:59pm EDT, Tuesday, 30 June 2026.
 
Full Competition details are available at the Cohen Essay Contest: Full Explanation web page, and the Application Form is available at the Cohen Essay Contest: Application web page.  Questions may be sent to John Moreland at JMoreland@phillipslytle.com.  The Competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School and recognized as “one of the towering figures of late 20th century law libraries.”  His scholarly work focused on legal research, rare law books, and historical bibliography.

Global Dissertation Prize

[We have the following announcement from the ASLH.  DRE.]

The American Society for Legal History (ASLH) is delighted to announce a new dissertation prize: the Global Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in global legal history. The [prize] recognizes the best dissertation from the previous calendar year on topics centered outside the United States. Eligible dissertations must be written in English and submitted for a PhD, JSD, or equivalent doctoral degree, excluding the JD, awarded in the previous calendar year (for example, a dissertation for a PhD awarded in 2025 would be eligible in 2026). Dissertations should not be predominantly focused on the US and may examine contexts, processes, or institutions that are local, regional, imperial, comparative, global, or otherwise. 

Submissions should be made by the author including only (1) the dissertation as submitted to the university for the degree, and (2) a curriculum vitae. 

To be considered for the year’s prize, the author should e-mail a PDF electronic copy of the dissertation and author’s curriculum vitae to the prize committee chair (globaldissertationprize@aslh.net) with the subject heading: GLOBAL DISSERTATION PRIZE SUBMISSION. Please title the PDF as “author last name” and “short title” .pdf (for example, Adewoye Lawyers Southern Nigeria.pdf).  

Deadline for Submissions: June 1, 2026.  Award Amount: $500.

Weekend Roundup

• Elizabeth Brand Monroe (1947-2026), a legal and public historian who received the Supreme Court Historical Society's Gossett Award for her article on the Dartmouth College Case (IndyStar). 

• Over at the LPE Blog: Serena Mayeri (Penn Carey Law) on "writing a history of marital privilege in an age of retrenchment." 

• In the Brigham Young University Law Review: a symposium reflecting on the 20th anniversary of David Skeel's Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America.   

• Robert Post, Yale Law School, and Daniel Holt,  Historical Office of the U.S. Senate, discuss the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925 in this recording of a lecture sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society. 

• The American Historical Association hosts a Congressional Briefing on the history of vaccines on Wednesday, February 11, at 9:00 a.m. ET in Rayburn House Office Building Room 2044.  Panelists Elena Conis (Univ. of California, Berkeley), David M. Oshinsky (New York Univ.), and Michael Willrich (Brandeis Univ.) will discuss the history of vaccines against diseases including smallpox, polio, and measles.

• Via H-Disability: a CFP for a workshop on "Disabilities and Women in Ancient Rome: Legal, social and cultural perspectives" (University of Helsinki, Finland, May 4, 2026). 

• The Federalist Society has announced the establishment the Meese Prize for Excellence in Originalist Scholarship.  The winner gets  $10,000.  H/t: Originalism Blog.    

• Madiba Dennie will discuss her book The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take it Back at UVA Law. 

• The latest Part of the Philip C. Jessup papers is open at the Library of Congress.  Here's Rachel McNellis's account.  (Unfolding History.)

• A notice of Scott Sandage's teaching on the Constitution in the Special Collections Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

• Now online from the National Constitution Center: "Lucas Morel and Melvin Rogers join to discuss how African American leaders and citizens, such as Prince Hall, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. have invoked the ideas and principles of the Declaration of Independence throughout American history to push for a more free and equal America." 

• Although the event for which it was produced was last year, the American Historical Association has just circulated this very useful handout on the history of the tariff. 

• ICYMI: A GWB-appointed judge blasts the removal of the mention of George Washington's slaves  from his Philadelphia home (ATL).  Relatedly, SHEAR has a tracker of this and similar purging of public history (Panorama).  Jack Rakove on Playing the Grinch at America’s 250th Birthday Party (Washington Monthly). George Liebmann provides Historical Perspective on the Unitary Executive (Law & Liberty).  Adolpho Birch, the first Black judge appointed in Nashville (Fox17). Noah Shusterman says there's still historical work to be done on the Second Amendment (DCFL).  The criminalizing of protest and dissent has a long history in America (Guardian).  Yearlong project restores lost videos of civil rights foot soldiers (Tuscaloosa News).

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Selma Moidel Smith Student Writing Competition in California Legal History

[As a reminder, we are moving up the following Call for Submissions.  DRE]

The California Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS) encourages all students working on
California legal history (NOT just the history of California courts) to apply for [the Selma Moidel Smith Student Writing Competition in California Legal History.  Papers may include elements of digital humanities and may also be co-authored. This is a GREAT WAY to get attention for your hard work!

$5,000 first-place, $2,500 second-place, and $1,000 third-place prizes will be awarded to the best papers on California state or colonial history, broadly considered. Recent winners include a study of the death penalty in California, the evolution of California land law, the desegregation of Stanford Law School, and disability law and the campaign for independent living. as well as a jointly authored paper on Chinese adoption practices and their role in immigration decisions after the Chinese Exclusion Act.

We accept papers of at least 7,500 and not more than 15,000 words, including notes and other explanatory matter. The competition is open to students and recent graduates in history and/or law, provided that they did not have full-time academic employment at the time the paper was written. The paper should also be unpublished; prize winners will likely receive an offer to publish in California Legal History, CSCHS's journal.

Papers may be self-nominated or sent in by a professor or supervisor. To ensure anonymity, the author's name should appear only on a separate cover page, along with the author's mailing address, telephone number, email address, and the name of their school.  

Submissions are due by July 1, 2026 and should be sent to director@cschs.org with the subject line "Smith Prize." The winners will be announced in August 2026, and an award ceremony (likely over Zoom) will be held in August or September. 

For the Prize Committee: Sarah Barringer Gordon, Laura Kalman, Stuart Banner

Smith Student Writing Prize in California Legal History

[We are moving up this previously posted call for submissions for this student writing prize because the due date is now July 15.  DRE]

The California Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS) encourages all students working on California legal history (NOT just the history of California courts) to apply for the Selma Moidel Smith Student Writing Competition in California Legal History. Papers may include elements of digital humanities and may also be co-authored. This is a GREAT WAY to get attention for your hard work!

$5,000 first-place, $2,500 second-place, and $1,000 third-place prizes will be awarded to the best papers on California state or colonial history, broadly considered. Recent winners include a study of the death penalty in California, the evolution of California land law, the desegregation of Stanford Law School, and disability law and the campaign for independent living. as well as a jointly authored paper on Chinese adoption practices and their role in immigration decisions after the Chinese Exclusion Act.

We accept papers of at least 7,500 and not more than 15,000 words, including notes and other
explanatory matter. The competition is open to students and recent graduates in history and/or law, provided that they did not have full-time academic employment at the time the paper was written. The paper should also be unpublished; prize winners will likely receive an offer to publish in California Legal History, CSCHS’s journal.

Papers may be self-nominated or sent in by a professor or supervisor. To ensure anonymity, the author’s name should appear only on a separate cover page, along with the author’s mailing address, telephone number, email address, and the name of their school.

Submissions are due by [July 15], 2025 and should be sent to director@cschs.org with the subject line “Smith Prize.” The winners will be announced in July 2025, and an award ceremony (likely over Zoom) will be held in August or September.

For the Prize Committee: Sarah Barringer Gordon, Laura Kalman, Stuart Banner

Justice Browning Awarded Texas Legal History Fellowship

[Congratulations to Justice Browning on this fellowship!  DRE]

The Texas State Historical Association has selected Justice (ret.) John G. Browning (law professor and Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Faulkner Law School in Montgomery, Alabama) as the winner of the 2025 Larry McNeill Research Fellowship in Texas Legal History. This award, which includes a stipend, is presented annually " for the best research proposal on some aspect of Texas legal history." Established in 2019 in honor of Larry McNeill ( a past president of both the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society), it " recognizes his commitment to fostering academic and grassroots research in legal history."  Justice Browning's winning proposal was for " Forgotten Firsts: Uncovering the Lives and Legacies of Texas' Early Black Lawyers." Justice Browning's work on America's early Black lawyers has appeared in multiple law reviews, bar journals, and the Journal of Supreme Court History.  The award and check were presented at a luncheon on February 28, 2025, during the TSHA's Annual Meeting in Houston.

Early Career Global Legal History Research Fellowships

[We have the following announcement from the American Society for Legal History.  DRE]

Early Career Global Legal History Research Fellowships
 
This new initiative is intended to provide funding for early career scholars, publishing in English, who are working on projects in legal history relating to non-U. S. history topics. Non-U. S. history topics refers to research that does not qualify for the fellowships awarded by the Cromwell Foundation in coordination with the ASLH. Early career scholars includes those researching or writing a PhD dissertation (or equivalent project) and recent recipients of a graduate degree working on their first major monograph or research project. The Committee will make up to five awards.

Criteria:  Early career scholars, publishing in English, researching in non-U. S. fields of legal history.  Amount: $2,000.  Deadline: June 30, 2025

Elements of Application:

1. Project Proposal (maximum 750 words including notes).  The proposal should include (in this order): your name and contact information; name and contact information for the reference you have asked to write for you; and project title and description;
2. Budget & Timeline (1 page);
3. Curriculum Vitae (1 page). It should include your name, contact information, education and degree dates, current appointment (if any), publications and conference papers, and professional society affiliations; and
4. One Letter of Recommendation.

Applicants should submit items 1-3 in a single pdf, and arrange to have the letter of recommendation submitted directly. Both the application and reference must be received by the deadline of June 30, 2025. Only complete applications will be considered.

Applications should make clear the relevance of law to the project and how the research will tell us something new about law. Applications should engage with relevant scholarship in the field. Finally, applications should have a clear budget that is specific about how and where you plan to spend research funds.

Submit Application and Recommendation to: global@aslh.net.  Awards will be formally announced at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History in Detroit.  Questions? Please email Barbara Welke (welke004@umn.edu).

Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section (LHRB) of the American Association of Law Libraries, in cooperation with The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., is conducting its annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition.  Full- and part-time students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs in law, history, library science, or related fields are eligible to enter.  Essays may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives.  Criteria on which papers will be judged include originality of topic or approach, quality and depth of research and analysis, clarity of presentation, and contribution to the field.  The winner will receive a $1,000 prize from The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., and will present the essay at an LHRB sponsored webinar.  The authors of the winning and runner-up essays will have the opportunity to publish their essays in LHRB’s online scholarly journal Unbound: A Review of Legal History and Rare Books.  The Competition electronic submission deadline is 11:59pm EDT, Friday, 20 June 2025.

 

Full Competition details are available at the LHRB Cohen Essay Contest: Full Explanation web page, and the Application Form is available at the LHRB Cohen Essay Contest: Application web page.  Questions may be sent to Laura Ray (l.ray@csuohio.edu), Outreach & Instructional Services Librarian, Cleveland State University College of Law.  The Competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School and recognized as “one of the towering figures of late 20th century law libraries.”  His scholarly work focused on legal research, rare law books, and historical bibliography.

ASLH Prizes

[We have the following announcement from the American Society for Legal History.]

Each year the ASLH and the Cromwell Foundation sponsor a number of prizes for books, articles, dissertations, and digital  legal history projects. Scholars are encouraged to apply, and to encourage others to apply. Please note that in some cases eligibility criteria have shifted slightly from last year. Applicants should double-check the specific language to ensure eligibility.

All ASLH prize nominations (including self-nominations) are due June 1.

--Dan Ernst  The descriptions of the prizes appear after the jump.

Kathryn T. Preyer Prize for Early Career Scholars

 [We have the following announcement from the American Society for Legal History.  DRE]

The deadline for submissions to the Kathryn T. Preyer Prize for early career scholars is April 1, 2025.  Please email a CV, contact information, and draft paper (50 pages) max to preyeraward@aslh.net.  

Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to early career 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 early career legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. The generosity of Professor Preyer’s friends and family has enabled the Society to offer a small honorarium to the Preyer Scholars and to reimburse, in some measure or entirely, their costs of attending the meeting. The competition for Preyer Scholars is organized by the Society’s Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee.

Submissions are welcome on any topic in legal, institutional and/or constitutional history. Early career scholars, including those pursuing graduate or law degrees, those who have completed their terminal degree within the previous year, and those independent scholars at a comparable stage, are eligible to apply. At the annual meeting of the Society two early career legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. While papers simultaneously submitted to the ASLH Program committee are eligible, Preyer Award winners must present their paper as part of the Preyer panel and will be removed from any other panel.

Submissions should consist of a single MS Word document consisting of a complete curriculum vitae, contact information, and a complete draft of the paper to be presented. Papers should not exceed 50 pages (12-point font, double-spaced). In past competitions, the Committee has given preference to draft articles and essays, though the Committee will also consider shorter conference papers, as one of the criteria for selection will be the suitability of the paper for reduction to a twenty-minute oral presentation. The deadline for submission is April 1, 2025.

The two Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will receive a $500 cash award and reimbursement of expenses up to $750 for travel, hotels, and meals. Each will present the paper that s/he submitted to the competition at the Society’s annual meeting. The Society’s journal, Law and History Review, has published several past winners of the Preyer competition, though it is under no obligation to do so.

Please send submissions by April 1, 2025 to preyeraward@aslh.net.

Call for Submissions: SCHS's Hughes-Gossett Award

 [We have the following announcement.  H/t: H-Law.  DRE.]

The Supreme Court Historical Society invites submissions for the Hughes-Gossett Award for the best student paper submitted to the Journal of Supreme Court History. The winner will be awarded a $500 cash prize and publication in the Journal.

The paper must be on some aspect of the Supreme Court’s history. Authors must have been enrolled as students at the time the paper was written. Past winners have been law school students or doctoral students in the departments of history, government, and political science.

Papers may be of any length and may be submitted on an ongoing basis to Helen Knowles-Gardner, Managing Editor, at: hknowles@supremecourthistory.org

Recent Past Winners

2023.  “FDR’s Court-packing and the Struggle for Civil Rights” by Zach Jonas

2021-22.  “Earl Warren’s Last Stand: Powell v. McCormack, Race, and the Political Question Doctrine” by Olivia O’Hea

2020.  “Rosenberger’s Unexplored History: Politics, the Press, and the University” by Rachael E. Jones

2018.  “Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: The Subtle Rapture of Postponed Power” by Adam H. Hines

The Julien Mezey Dissertation Award

[We have the following announcement.  H/t: H-Law.  DRE.]

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (LCH) is accepting submissions for the 2025 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture, and the humanities.

LCH seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including but not limited to law and cultural studies, law and critical race studies, law and gender and sexuality, legal theory and environmentalism, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2025 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between March 2024 and March 2025.

The Association will cover the Mezey Prize winner’s travel and lodging costs to attend our annual meeting.  Nominations for the 2025 award must be received on or before March 15, 2025.  For submission instructions, please see our website.

Cromwell Article of the Year Prize to Allread and Zhang and Morley

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

October 15, 2024
New York, New York

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation announced today that its Legal History Article of the Year Prize for 2023 is awarded to W. Tanner Allread for “The Specter of Indian Removal,” and to Taisu Zhang and John D. Morley for “The Modern State and the Rise of the Business Corporation.”  

In “The Specter of Indian Removal: The Persistence of State Supremacy Arguments in Federal Indian Law,” 123 Columbia Law Review 1533 (2023), Allread takes Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, as a point of departure for exhuming the 1820s and 1830s origins of contemporary defenses of state (as opposed to federal) power over Native nations. Allread shows that the era of Removal and genocide was accompanied by systematic efforts to assert state jurisdiction over Native sovereignty. He describes the legal bases asserted for those efforts.  And he traces the persistence of these early nineteenth century developments into the modern era. For Allread, state power’s Removal roots are an ugly reminder of the past.

In “The Modern State and the Rise of the Business Corporation,” Morley and Zhang tackle a longstanding debate about the historical origins of the corporate form. Taking up a wide array of historical examples, ranging from late imperial China to the early United States, they show that pooling of strangers into a single enterprise requires the coercive powers of a state with the capacity to coerce the participants. Contrary to theorists who posit the corporation as a creature of private market actors’ self-interest, Morley and Zhang show the irreducible necessity of state regulation in its basic foundations.

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, established by William Nelson Cromwell in 1930, supports work in American legal history.  The Foundation has long awarded Early Scholar prizes and fellowships to early career scholars in the field of American legal history. The Foundation’s new prize for the legal history article of the year, which includes a $10,000 award, is intended to recognize the growing role of legal history and teaching and research in law schools. The new annual prize is awarded for the best article in the field of legal history, written by a legal scholar, or published in a journal of legal scholarship. This is the first prize the Foundation has offered that is open to scholars of any level of seniority. The prize committee, chaired by Foundation trustee John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School), consisted of Foundation trustees Sarah Barringer Gordon (Penn Carey Law) and John Langbein (Yale Law School), along with Dan Ernst (Georgetown Law), Amalia Kessler (Stanford Law School), and Alison LaCroix (University of Chicago Law School).  

The Foundation makes grants to support important work in all facets of American legal history including archival preservation, scholarly study of original documents, original research in all areas of the law, and research and writing of biographies of major legal figures. Information on how to apply for a prize, fellowship or grant may be found on the Foundation’s website.

Weekend Roundup

• The top three winners of the California Supreme Court Historical Society's Selma Moidel Smith student writing contest were recently celebrated (Daily Journal).
  

• Steven Hahn, author of Illiberal America: A History, and Manisha Sinha, join Thomas Donnelly “to explore the history of illiberalism in America and to assess illiberal threats facing our democracy today” in a National Constitution Center podcast.  The NCC's podcast on "The Constitutional Legacy of Watergate" is here.
  

• Lawbook Exchange’s August 2024 catalogue of Scholarly Law & Legal History is here.
  

• Seth Barrett Tillman and Josh Blackman explain What [They] Did and Did Not Argue in United States v. Trump.
  

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Weekend Roundup

• Over at the New Republic: John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School) reviews Aziz Rana's The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them (University of Chicago Press, 2024). 
  

• In the Talking about Methods podcast series over at Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies, Linda Mulcahy talks to Michael Lobban, All Souls College, Oxford, about working with archives as a legal historian.

• Writing for Justia: Rodger Citron (Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center) on "The Continuing Relevance of The Rosenberg Espionage Case—for Judge Aileen Cannon."
  

• The commentaries continue on the U.S. Supreme Court's use of history (and various reflections on the use of history in judicial decisionmaking) in the recently decided Second Amendment case United States v. Rahimi: Eric Segall at Dorf on Law; Mark Tushnet at Balkinization; Jennifer Tucker at CNN; Saul Cornell at Slate.
  

• From In Custodia Legis (the blog of the law librarians of Congress): LGBTQ+ Legal History in the U.S. Reports Collection. 
  

• "Australia’s first civilian jury was entirely female. Here’s how ‘juries of matrons’ shaped our legal history," by Alice Neikirk, University of Newcastle (The Conversation).
  

• From Time's "Made by History": Supreme Court Opinions Don’t Have to Be the End of the Fight for Justice, by Robert Tsai.  A Mistake in the Early 1970s Still Haunts Supreme Court Ethics, by Michael Bobelian.  (Yup, it involved Abe Fortas.)
  

• Balkinization is hosting a symposium on Mark A. Graber's Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty: The Forgotten Goals of Constitutional Reform after the Civil War (University of Kansas Press, 2023).  The first posts are by Anne Twitty, David S. Schwartz, and Evan D. Bernick.
  

• In “What’s Left of Originalism?” Andrew Koppelman reviews Jack M. Balkin’s Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
  

• Queens University has noted the prizes won by two of its doctoral candidates.  Michael Borsk received two awards for his article, “Conveyance to Kin: Property, Preemption, and Indigenous Nations in North America, 1763-1822,” William and Mary Quarterly 80, no. 1 (January 2023): 87-124.  They are the Peter Oliver Prize in Canadian Legal History from the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, awarded to the best published work by a student, and the 2024 Jean-Marie Fecteau Prize by the Canadian Historical Association, awarded to the best article published in a peer-reviewed journal.  Margaret Ross won the best article prize awarded by the Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality for her article, “‘Your Town Is Rotten’: Prostitution, Profit, and the Governing of Vice in Kingston, Ontario, 1860s–1920s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 32 (May 2023).
  

• Over at Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog: Otto Vervaart on Viewing Roman Slavery from Bonn.
  

• ICYMI:  Washington [State's] legal history, including West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, captured in murals for a Wenatchee courtroom (NCWLIFE). John A. Lupton on John Doe and Richard Roe.  Mark Tushnet thinks some more about originalism (after stopping trying to make sense of originalism) (X).  Blake Emerson puts Jarkesy in historical context (Marketplace).
  

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Weekend Roundup

• We were pleased to learn that Alastair McClure, University of Hong Kong, an expert on Asian legal history, is the new Associate Editor at Law and History Review.

• Natasha Wheatley, Princeton University, discusses her book, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton, 2023) on the Talking Legal History podcast with Siobhan M. M. Barco.
  

• Over at Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog: Petitions in Early Modern Britain: Asking for justice, questioning the law.

• 
  
  LHB Co-Blogger Karen Tani was part of a stellar lineup at a plenary session of this weekend's American Political History Conference, entitled "The Courts and American Democracy." The other panelists were Julian Mortenson, and Gautham Rao.  Rachel Shelden moderated.  DRE
  

• Another book event for Alison LaCroix's Interbellum Constitution: On June 17, Professor LaCroix is on the program of a Town Hall of the National Constitution Center with William B. Allen, a political theorist who was edited and translated Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.  Register here.  
  

• A discussion of Jennifer Black's Branding Trust. Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America with the author is now up on the YouTube channel of the Business History Conference.

• Dylan C. Penningroth will discuss Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, at 6 p.m. at the City of West Hollywood’s Council Chambers/Public Meeting Room located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested, here.
  

• The Historical Society of the New York Courts and the Supreme Court, New York County Civil Branch, are sponsoring a hybrid event, NY County Courthouse WPA Murals: Who Created Them and What Do They Represent? at the New York County Courthouse Rotunda at 60 Centre Street, NYC, Tuesday, June 25, 2024, from 1:00 - 2:30 PM.  The speakers are Greta Berman, emerita The Julliard School, and Helen A. Harrison, the former director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Stony Brook Foundation.  Jon Ritter, Clinical Professor of Art History, New York University, will moderate.
  

• Dueling books on American constitutionalism at the NCC's next Town Hall, on June 12, btw: Center: Yuval Levin’s American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again and Aziz Rana’s The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.  Jeffrey Rosen moderates.  Register here.
  

• The Organization of American Historians has announced  two new awards: the Award for Contributions to Public Policy, and the Joseph L. Peyser Prize for New France History.  "The Award for Contributions to Public Policy will annually recognize a scholar of any discipline who has made a significant contribution to U.S. public policy through historical research. The award is made possible through the generosity of J. Morgan Kousser, Professor of History and Social Science Emeritus at California Institute of Technology." 
  

• Registration is still open for The Road to the Release of John Hinckley: Attempted Presidential Assassination, Insanity, Commitment, and the Courts, an event sponsored by the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit to be held on June 27.

• The intellectual historian and author of a great book on the history of social science, Dorothy Ross, has died.  Here is Johns Hopkins's notice. 
  

• Allen D. Boyer, the author, with Mark Nicholls, of The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History (Routledge, 2024), has posted “Terrible as an Army with Banners”: Banners, Treason, and January Sixth. 
  

• 
  New online in the American Journal of Legal History: A Turbid River of History and Law: The Procurement of Women in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea, by Marie Seong-Hak Kim
  

• Carl Landauer has published C.H. Alexandrowicz's India and the Kautilyan Moment in the Asian Journal of International Law.
  

• On the ABAJ's Modern Law Library podcast: Madiba K. Dennie discusses her book, The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back.
  

• ICYMI:  Why Americans Have a Right to Trial by Jury (History).  A historical marker for Sully Jaymes, the first Black lawyer in Springfield, Ohio (Springfield News-Sun).
  

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Reminder of upcoming (June 1) ASLH deadlines

 Via the leadership of the American Society for Legal History, we have the following reminder:

A reminder that June 1, 2024 is the deadline for applying for many ASLH prizes and fellowships. 

Early Career scholars and graduate students can apply for the Student Research Colloquium and the Cromwell Fellowships. Recent PhDs in European legal history in a Global Perspective should consider applying for our new opportunity for residence at the Max Planck Institute. Early career scholars can also apply to the Virtual Early Career Workshop, applications for which are due June 30.

Each year the ASLH also sponsors a rich array of book and article prizes, including a prize in digital legal history.

Finally, a reminder that each year the ASLH makes available grants of up to $5,000 for Projects and Proposals related to legal history. These applications will be due September 15, 2024.

You might also use this opportunity to renew your membership!

-- Karen Tani

Weekend Roundup

• From Time's "Made by History" section: Hardeep Dhillon (University of Pennsylvania), "What Was Revealed When British Officials Calculated How Much a Colonial Subject’s Life Was Worth."

• NPR quotes Mary Ziegler (UC Davis) in assessing "What's at stake as the Supreme Court hears Idaho case about abortion in emergencies."  And Professor Ziegler's op-ed on the case in the NYT is here.
  

• Holly Brewer, University of Maryland, discusses the Trump immunity case on the Law Dork podcast.  Nancy Isenberg, Louisiana State University, does so as well, here.  And Donald Nieman, University of Binghamton does here.
  

• 
  Legal history was well represented when the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era met for its annual luncheon at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians.  Laura Edwards, Princeton University, gave the Distinguished Historian Address, “No Account: Rethinking the Narrative of Women and Property in the Late Nineteenth Century.”  Michael Willrich, Brandeis University, won the President’s Book Prize for American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 2023).  Elizabeth D. Katz, University of Florida, received Honorable Mention for the Fishel-Calhoun Prize, an article prize for new scholars, for “Sex, Suffrage, and State Constitutional Law: Women’s Legal Right to Hold Public Office,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism (2022).  And Mazie Hough, University of Maine, won the 2024 JGAPE Best Article Prize for “‘There is Nothing So Sacred as Human Life:’ Infanticide and the State of Maine, 1877-1917.” (SHGAPE Blog).   
  

• Day 1 of Slavery in New Netherland and the Dutch Atlantic World, a two-day conference sponsorted by the Hew-Tork Historical Society on May 3-4, apparently is sold out, but Day 2 isn't.
  

• ICYMI: Throckmorton's Case continues to fascinate decades after we first encountered it in John Langbein's DLI  (The Leaflet).  Ronald G. Shafer on Justice Joseph P. Bradley and the Hayes-Tilden Commission (WaPo Retropolis). A notice of Michael Hoeflich’s Legal Feasts (KU News).
  

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

The Hunt for Iudex Non Calculat

We have the following announcement.  If we taught contracts, we might be tempted to put this on our exam.  DRE]

Whence “iudex non calculat”?  Research Competition 2024 in History of Language and Law

Seventy-five years ago, US professor Curt Gruneberg described “an old Roman proverb” supposedly “indicating the general dislike of Roman jurists against determining amounts by way of mathematical processes.” This proverb was “Iudex non calculat” – “a judge does not calculate.”  Like other writers before and after 1949, Gruneberg failed to cite a source for this supposedly ancient maxim. In fact, even today there is no known reference to “non calculat” in any source before 1850. Or is there?

The Professorship for Legal Linguistics at the Wiesbaden University of Business and Law (EBS Law School) holds the 2024 research competition to crowd-source the oldest available reference to “non calculat.”  Early career researchers and anyone else interested in legal language or history are invited to submit digitized primary sources (written or printed, published or not) containing the exact phrase “(i/j)udex non calculat” prior to 1850. The three oldest sources each win (fame and) a book prize.

The deadline to submit answers to Prof. Dr. Dr. Hamann, JSM, is Sunday, June 20, 2024.  The first, second, and third prizes are a book of your choice and an official award letter.

Dissertation Prize: European Legal History in Global Perspective

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Max Planck–ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective

Announcement and Deadline for Submissions:  June 1, 2024
 
The American Society for Legal History (ASLH) is delighted to announce a new dissertation prize: the Max Planck–ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective.
 
The prize will honor exceptional dissertations on topics in European legal history in global perspective and presented for PhD or JSD degrees awarded in the previous calendar year. Topics may include European legal interactions with people or places outside Europe, legal processes spanning Europe and other world regions, and developments in legal theory closely related to imperial, transnational, or trans-regional trends.
 
The prize this year is for dissertations submitted for degrees awarded in 2023. Dissertations must be written in English. The prize recipient will receive a three-month residential fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt. The fellowship includes a monthly stipend, in accordance with the regulations of the Institute’s visitor program, round-trip airfare to Frankfurt (up to €1,500), and accommodation in an institute apartment (valued at €700 per month). Currently, the monthly stipend is €2,500 for scholars with a PhD or JSD, and an additional €100 allowance for mandatory health insurance. The stipend will be offset against other sources of income. The timing of the period in residence at the Max Planck Institute is flexible and will be arranged in consultation with the Institute directors. Typically, the three-month period will take place in the fall or spring within a year or two of the date of the award.
 
Elements of Submission
(1) Curriculum Vitae (including date of degree);
(2) Plan for Use of Fellowship Time at the Max Planck Institute (up to 500 words);
(3) Dissertation (including abstract); and
(4) Letter from Dissertation Advisor
 
Please submit items 1-3 in a single pdf. The Dissertation Advisor should submit the letter of recommendation directly.
 
All application materials should be sent to mpdissertation@aslh.net
 
The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2024. Only complete submissions will be considered.
 
Questions? Write to Barbara Welke (welke004@umn.edu)