Weekend Roundup

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  David Sugarman (credit)

  The Socio-Legal Studies Association has awarded David Sugarman its 2025 prize for  “Outstanding Contribution to the Socio-Legal Community."  Professor Sugarman's contribution to “modern socio-legal historical studies” was specially noted.  SLSA's informative notice is here.  See also the notices of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford and of Lancaster University.

• News from the National Constitution Center: President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Rosen is transitioning to the role of CEO Emeritus.  

• YLS’s notice of New Perspectives on the Legal Treatise (Hein), edited by Femi Cadmus and Nicholas Mignanelli, a collection of essays resulting from the Second Yale Legal Information Symposium, entitled “The Legal Treatise: Past, Present, and Future” and held in March 2023.  New Perspectives opens with an essay by John Langbein that traces “the decline of legal treatise writing in the American legal academy to the rise of legal realism.”

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  UVA Law's notice of Saikrishna Prakash's The Presidential Pardon: The Short Clause with a Long, Troubled History (Harvard University Press) (pub. date 1-20) with a discussion of the book by Professor Prakash. 

• On February 23, Michael Klarman, the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, will deliver the Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture at Fordham Law, entitled, “How did we get here?” (Fordham Law).

• Daniel E. Thompson has posted Litigating Originalism in Bruen: A Brief-Level Coding Study of History, Evidence, and Argument Form.  "This ["descriptive and provisional"] article offers a pilot, brief-level coding analysis of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Corlett (No. 20-843) at the certiorari stage and the same docket at the merits stage (NYSRPA v. Bruen). Using a transparent scoring rubric, it codes ten briefs on four dimensions: Originalist Evidentiary Strength (0–4), Historical-to-Doctrinal Rigor (0–4), Rhetorical Force (0–3), and Consequentialist Overlay (0–3)." 

• From Bunk: "Best History Writing of 2025."  

• Recently published: The Old Alcalde: Life and Times of a Texas Fire-Eater, Oran Milo Roberts, by John A. Adams, Jr.  Roberts was, in addition to much else, Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and the president of Texas's Secession Convention in 1861 (Ricochet).

• Jack Goldsmith on Edward Levi's Department of Justice (Executive Functions). 

• ICYMI: Ilan Wurman on birthright citizenship (Compact).  Stephen Halbrook on "history and tradition" and the Second Amendment in Joel Alicea's amicus brief in the Hawaii "no carry case" (Volokh Conspiracy). A terrifically interesting HLR case comment, bridging Roman Law, Norman Rockwell and FDR's White House, on Elam v. Early (4th Cir. 2025).

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

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.

Journal of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society 13:1

The Texas Supreme Court Historical Society has published the Fall 2023 issue (13:1) of its Journal.  Sports is the major theme of the issue, although a few other subjects sneak in, including my profile of Marguerite Rawalt.  I’m grateful to the editor for soliciting it.  Here are the principal articles:

Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the Judicial Strike Zone —Home Run or Foul on the Play?
Jan L. Jacobowitz

Float Like a Butterfly, and Sting Like a Supreme Court Opinion: Muhammad Ali’s Draft Evasion Trial
Hon. John G. Browning

Trouble and Justice: How Trouble in Texas Led to the Court Martial Trial of America’s Beloved Jackie Robinson.
Alia L. Adkins-Derrick

Punching Above His Weight: “Sporty” Harvey and the Fight to Integrate Boxing in Texas
Hon. John G. Browning

Undistinguished Distinction: Texas’s (Scant) History of Removal Impeachment
Bruce Tomaso

Jack Johnson and the Mann Act
Hon. John G. Browning

A Profile of Marguerite Rawalt
Daniel R. Ernst

--Dan Ernst

Larry McNeill Research Fellowship in Texas Legal History

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The Larry McNeill Research Fellowship in Texas Legal History [of $2,500] is awarded annually [by the Texas State Historical Association] for the best research proposal on some aspect of Texas legal history.

The application, which should be no longer than two pages, should specify the purpose of the research and provide a description of the end product (article or book). The applicant’s vitae should be attached to the application. The award will be announced at the Association’s Annual Meeting in February 2020. Judges may withhold the award at their discretion.

Individuals should submit an entry form, four (4) copies of their vitae, and four (4) copies of a proposal to the TSHA office by December 28, 2019.

Larry McNeill Research Fellowship Committee
Texas State Historical Association
3001 Lake Austin Blvd., Suite 3.116
Austin, TX 78703

The Larry McNeill Research Fellowship in Texas Legal History was established in 2019 by the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society (TSCHS) in honor of Larry McNeill, a past president of TSCHS and the Texas State Historical Association. The award recognizes his commitment to fostering academic and grassroots research in Texas legal history.

Sethna, Davis and friends on travel for abortion

Out with Johns Hopkins University Press is Abortion Across Borders: Transnational Travel and Access to Abortion Services, edited by Christabelle Sethna, University of Ottawa and Gayle Davis, University of Edinburgh. Many of the chapters are historical in approach, focusing on travel for abortion since the 1960s. From the press: 

Safe, legal, and affordable abortion is widely recognized as an essential medical service for women across the world. When access to that service is denied or restricted, women are compelled to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, seek backstreet abortionists, attempt self-induced abortions, or even travel to less restrictive states, provinces, and countries to receive care.

Abortion across Borders focuses on travel across domestic and international boundaries to terminate a pregnancy. Christabelle Sethna and Gayle Davis have gathered a cadre of authors to examine how restrictive policies force women to move both within and across national borders in order to reach abortion providers, often at great expense, over long distances and with significant safety risks. Taking historical and contemporary perspectives, contributors examine the situation in regions that include Texas, Prince Edward Island, Ireland, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Eastern Europe. Throughout, they take a feminist intersectional approach to transnational travel and access to abortion services that is sensitive to inequalities of gender, race, and class in reproductive health care.

This multidisciplinary volume raises challenging logistical, legal, and ethical questions while exploring the gendered aspects of medical tourism. A noticeable rollback of reproductive rights and renewed attention to border security in many parts of the world will make Abortion across Borders of timely interest to scholars of gender and women's studies, health, medicine, law, mobility studies, and reproductive justice.

Table of Contents after the jump: