Weekend Roundup

• Reminder: Applications for the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards to support research and writing in American legal history by early-career scholar are due on July 1.  (The Committee for Research Fellowships and Awards of the American Society for Legal History reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the Foundation.)  More.

• This year’s recipients of Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships include Tamar Menashe, Columbia University, for "People of the Law: The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495–1690," and Lila Teeters, University of New Hampshire, for “Native Citizens: The Fight For and Against Native Citizenship in the United States, 1866–1924.”

• Process, the blog of the Journal of American History and the Organization of American Historians, has put out a call for submissions on "all aspects of the history of disability in the United States."

• Two new articles online in the American Journal of Legal History: “Law at a Critical Juncture: The US Army’s Command Responsibility Trials at Manila 1945–1947,” by Jamie Fellows; and “Reforming Criminal Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Police, Courts and Prisons in Rusçuk, 1839-1864,” by Mehmet Celik.

• Here is the Harvard Law School faculty's open letter condemning "a series of acts by President Trump and other public servants that endorse violence and are inconsistent with a democratic legal order." Signatories include every legal historian we can think of who teaches there.

• The Consortium for Undergraduate Law & Justice Programs recently announced its 2020 awards for teaching and best undergraduate paper.

• Justin W. Aimonetti, a recent graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, has posted his student note Colonial Virginia: The Intellectual Incubator of Judicial Review, published in the Virginia Law Review 106 (2020): 765-810.  He thanks UVA Law’s Cynthia Nicoletti.

• From the Riesenfeld Rare Books Blog at the University of Minnesota: Law in Times of Crisis, II

• ICYMI: Dean Risa Goluboff draws on her own historical research in her message to UVA law students.  David Blight on Frederick Douglass and "the tortured relationship between protest and change" (The Atlantic). Alexander Zhang on this history of "school-to-prison pipeline" policing in Minneapolis (Slate).

• ICYMI, Insurrection Act Edition:  Gautham Rao on the Posse Comitatus and Insurrection Acts (CNN).  The History Channel on the Jeffersonian origins of the Insurrection Act.  Still more, in WaPo's Retropolis.
  

• Over at Balkinization, Stephen Griffin develops an aspect of his recent SSRN post "Optimistic Originalism and the Reconstruction Amendments."Also at Balkinization: Gregory Ablavsky (Stanford Law School) on "PROMESA and Original Understandings of the Territories’ Constitutional Status."

• Lots of important content in the Washington Post's "Made by History" section this week, including Elizabeth Kolsky (Villanova University) on "how autopsies can uphold white supremacy."
  

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

ASLH Graduate Student Funding Initiative

[Lauren Benton, President of the American Society for Legal History, has announced the following initiative.  Please note that eligibility is limited only to graduate students who are ASLH members.  DRE]

In recognition of the challenges to graduate students who are conducting legal history research when travel and funding are restricted and when many archives closed, the ASLH is offering a limited number of small grants to help support remote research.

The application is open to graduate students at any stage who are ASLH members. Each successful applicant will receive $1,000, to be used to obtain digital materials or to cover other expenses incurred while conducting summer research. The deadline is June 15, 2020. Apply here.

Please help ASLH expand this initiative. Anonymous donors have pledged a total of $3,000 to fund three graduate student grants. You can make a gift of any size to help us do more. To give, choose “Small Grants for Digital Legal History” from the dropdown menu on our "Donate" page.

[And, while we're at it: note that the June 1 deadline for various ASLH prizes and awards will soon be upon us.]

Cromwell Dissertation Prize Deadline Approaching

[We have the following announcement from the Cromwell Dissertation Prize Committee of the American Society for Legal History.  DRE]

The Cromwell Dissertation Prize Committee welcomes submissions as the June 1 submission deadline approaches, and encourages members to forward this announcement to any graduate student or dissertation director who may be interested. To apply, one need only submit a copy of the completed dissertation and a CV. Click here for full submission details.

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best dissertation in any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies, although topics dealing with the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference.

The author of the winning dissertation receives $5,000. Anyone who received a Ph.D. in 2019 will be eligible for this year’s prize, which is awarded by the Foundation after a review of the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History.

ASLH Student Research Colloquium and Graduate Student Survey

[We have two announcements from the American Society for Legal History for M.A. students, Ph.D. students, and law students whose interests include legal history.  DRE]

Student Research Colloquium:  The ASLH invites graduate students to apply to the Student Research Colloquium (SRC), currently scheduled (fingers crossed) for Nov. 11-12, in Chicago, Illinois, immediately prior to the ASLH annual meeting there.  At this pre-conference, funded workshop, eight graduate students will discuss their in-progress research projects with each other and with distinguished legal historians.  Target applicants include early-post-coursework Ph.D. students and historically minded law students.  To apply, electronically submit the following four items to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net: a CV; a cover letter describing, among other things, how many years remain in your course of graduate study; a two-page, single-spaced Research Statement that begins with a title and describes the in-progress project that you propose to present to the colloquium; and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from the other materials.  The application deadline is June 15, 2020.  For more information, click this link. 

Graduate Student Survey:  The ASLH regards graduate students as an important part of our legal history community.  We are proud of our efforts to date to make the ASLH a hospitable home for early-stage scholars.  But we want to do better.  Among other things, we want to enhance the presence of international graduate students in the organization.  Accordingly, we are gathering information that will help us to make the society an even more inclusive place for early-stage legal historians.  If you are a graduate student or a historically minded law student, please click this link to take a short survey in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, as you choose.  We appreciate your time and hope to see you at the annual meeting in Chicago!

SHAFR Dissertation Completion Fellowship

[We have the following announcement. DRE]

SHAFR Marilyn Blatt Young Dissertation Completion Fellowship

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) invites applications for its dissertation completion fellowship. SHAFR will make one year-long award in the amount of $25,000 each, to support the writing and completion of the doctoral dissertation in each academic year. This highly competitive fellowship will support the most promising doctoral candidates in the final phase of completing their dissertations. Membership in SHAFR is required. Applicants should be candidates for the PhD in a humanities or social science doctoral program (most likely history), must have been admitted to candidacy, and must be at the writing stage, with all substantial research completed by the time of the award. Applicants should be working on a topic in the field of U.S. foreign relations history or international history, broadly defined, and must be current members of SHAFR. Because successful applicants are expected to finish writing the dissertation during the tenure of the fellowship, they should not engage in teaching opportunities or extensive paid work, except at the discretion of the Fellowship Committee. At the termination of the award period, recipients must provide a one page (250-word) report to the SHAFR Council on the use of the fellowship, to be considered for publication in the society newsletter. The submission packet should include:

• A one page application letter describing the project’s significance, the applicant’s status, other support received or applied for and the prospects for completion within the year.

• A three-page statement of the research

• A curriculum vitae

• A letter of recommendation from the primary doctoral advisor.

The research statement should run no longer than three double-spaced pages; statements exceeding this limit will not be reviewed. The letter may be single-spaced. Both the letter and statement should be formatted with 1-inch margins and 12 point font, Times New Roman preferred.

To apply, please use the online application. Questions can be sent by electronic mail to dissertation-fellowships@shafr.org. The deadline for submissions is 1 April. Fellowship awards will be decided by around May 1 and will be announced formally during the SHAFR annual meeting in June, with expenditure to be administered during the subsequent academic year.

The Fellowship Committee
Hidetaka Hirota, Chair
Vanessa Walker
Ilaria Scaglia

Berger-Howe Deadline Approaching

[We’ve earlier posted a version of this announcement, but because the deadline of February 15 is imminent, we’re reposting.  DRE] 

Harvard Law School invites applications for the Berger-Howe Fellowship for the academic year 2020-2021. Eligible applicants include those who have a first law degree, who have completed the required coursework for a doctorate, or who have recently been awarded a doctoral degree. A J.D. is preferred, but not required. The purpose of the fellowship is to enable the fellow to complete a major piece of writing in the field of legal history, broadly defined. There are no limitations as to geographical area or time period.

Fellows are expected to spend the majority of their time on their own research. They also help coordinate the Harvard Law School Legal History Colloquium, which meets four or five times each semester. Fellows are invited to present their own work at the colloquium. Fellows will be required to be in residence at the law school during the academic year (September through May).

Applicants for the fellowship for 2020-2021 should submit their applications and supporting materials electronically to Professor Bruce H. Mann (mann@law.harvard.edu).

Each interested applicant should submit:

• a detailed (five pages maximum) description of a proposed project,
• a writing sample,
• a comprehensive résumé or curriculum vitae that gives the applicant’s educational background, publications, works in progress, and other relevant experience, and
• copies of official transcripts of all academic work done at the graduate level. The applicant should arrange for two academic references to be submitted electronically. The transcripts may be sent by regular mail to Professor Mann at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

The deadline for applications is February 15, 2020, and announcement of the award will be made by March 15, 2020.

The fellow selected will be awarded a stipend of $38,000.

ABF Fellowships: Deadline Extended

[We're moving up this announcement from the American Bar Foundation because the deadline for all fellowships (except the ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholars) has been extended to February 15.  DRE]

Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities at the American Bar Foundation

As one of the world’s leading research institutes for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law, the American Bar Foundation (ABF) is committed to fostering the next generation of sociolegal scholars.  The ABF is inviting applications for the following opportunities:

Postdoctoral

1.    The ABF/Access Lex Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Legal & Higher Education

2.    Postdoctoral Scholar in The ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholars Program   

Doctoral

1.    The ABF/Access Lex Institute Doctoral Fellowship Program in Legal & Higher Education

2.    The ABF Doctoral Fellowship Program in Law & Inequality

3.    ABF/Northwestern Univeristy Doctoral Fellowship Program in Law and Social Science

These fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant research. Fellows become immersed in an exciting and diverse intellectual community and gain access to a professional network of innovative scholars. Because the ABF’s sole focus is research, there is no teaching component to these fellowships.

In addition to working on their own research, Fellows receive mentoring from a community of leading socio-legal scholars throughout the length of the fellowship. They will participate in a series of weekly in-house seminars to get acquainted with the many facets of sociolegal research and working groups to promote professional development, such writing workshops and mock job talks.

All Fellows will work at the ABF’s office in Chicago on a full-time basis from September 2020 to August 2022 and will receive an annual stipend of $35,000 for the Doctoral and $65,000 for the Postdoctoral fellowship.

Flyers can be downloaded at the links [above.] Please share this information with members of your academic community.

The fellowships programs are featured in our recent Researching Law issue as well. For further information, please email fellowships@abfn.org or visit our website.

Max Planck Announces Two Doctoral Studentships

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt is a world leader in researching the history of law in Europe and beyond. Its two research departments with more than 60 scholars, the unrivalled collections of its specialized library and its numerous national and international co-operations make it the central research hub for a global scientific community investigating the past, present and future of legal regimes.

We are now looking to recruit two Doctoral Students from 1 April 2020 or as soon as possible thereafter for the research programme ‘The History of European Union Employment Law’, under the supervision of Professors Thorsten Keiser and Stefan Vogenauer, dealing with the following topics:

(1) The History of EU Employment Law
(2) The History of Antidiscrimination in Labour Relations: France and Italy in Light of EU Law

CFP: Michigan Law Junor Scholars Conference

[We have the following CFP.  DRE]

Call for Papers: Michigan Law School 2020 Junior Scholars Conference, April 17-18, 2020.  Deadline for Submission: January 3, 2020

The University of Michigan Law School is pleased to invite junior scholars to attend the 6th Annual Junior Scholars Conference which will be held on April 17-18, 2020, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

The conference provides junior scholars with a platform to present and discuss their work with peers and receive detailed feedback from prominent members of the Michigan Law faculty. The Conference aims to promote fruitful collaboration between participants and to encourage their integration into a community of legal scholars. The Junior Scholars Conference is intended for academics in both law and related disciplines. Applications from graduate students, SJD/PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, lecturers, teaching fellows, and assistant professors (pre-tenure) who have not held an academic position for more than four years, are welcomed.

Submission: To apply to the conference, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words reflecting the unpublished work that you wish to present and a copy of your CV through the online submission form by January 3, 2020. Please save all files as word documents in the following format: LAST NAME – FIRST NAME – ABSTRACT/CV/FUNDING

Selection will be based on the quality and originality of the abstract as well as its capacity to engage with other proposals and to foster a collaborative dialogue. Decisions will be communicated no later than January 31, 2020. Selected participants will be required to submit final papers by March 16, 2020, so that they may be sent to your faculty commentator and circulated among participants in advance.

Financial Assistance: A very limited fund is available to help cover partial travel expenses and accommodation for selected participants. If you wish to be considered for financial assistance, please submit a separate written request through the online form specifying your city of departure and an estimate of travel costs. We regret in advance that we are unable to provide full financial assistance to participants.

Questions can be directed to the Organizing Committee Chair through the email address below.

Chun-Han Chen, Chair
University of Michigan Law School Center for International and Comparative Law
Junior Scholars Organizing Committee 200 Hutchins Hall, 625 South State Street
law-doconf@umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215, U.S.A.

ASLH 2019: Special Walk-Up Rate for Boston Grad Students

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Boston-Area Graduate Students Welcome at ASLH Meeting in November

A special walk-up registration rate is available for attendees who can show student identification from local universities and who are new to American Society for Legal History (that is, they are not current members and have not previously attended a meeting). The walk-up rate of $25 entitles the registrant to attend all panels, exhibits, and graduate student events but does not include a ticket to the annual luncheon. The walk-up rate also provides the registrant with a one-year trial membership in the ASLH.

Weekend Roundup

• Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words, a new exhibit at the Library of Congress, opens December 5.

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Donald M. Beaudette (Oxford College of Emory University) and Laura Weinstein (independent scholar) on "why a 1972 Northern Ireland murder matters so much to historians"; Margaret A. Nash (University of California, Riverside) on "The dark history of land-grant universities"; and more.

• The Law and Society Association has issued a call for applications for a Graduate Student & Early Career Workshop. It will be held May 26-27, 2020, in Denver, Colorado, immediately preceding the LSA Annual Meeting. More information here.

• Writing for JOTWELL's Criminal Law Section, Jonathan Simon (Berkeley Law) has posted an admiring review of Laura I. Appleman's "Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration," which appeared in Volume 68 of the Duke Law Journal  (2018).

• The University of Chicago Law School celebrated Nelson Willis (LL.B. 1918), its first African American graduate.

• Megan Siu reviews Abortion: History, Politics, and Reproductive Justice after Morgentaler, ed. Shannon Stettner, Kristin Burnett & Travis Hay (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017).

• Check out "Radical Movements" by Christopher Szabla, a review essay in The New Rambler on Renisa Mawani's book, Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire. 

• Yesterday past-ASLH-president Constance Backhouse delivered the Shannon Lecture at Carleton University’s Department of History, Feminism and the Supreme Court: How the First Two Women Appointed to Our Top Court Widened Judicial Debates.

• Philip Girard, Osgoode Hall Law School, delivered the keynote address to the first conference of the Legal History Society of Nigeria.  More. 

• Victoria Woeste presented “Fake News: Antisemitic Propaganda from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Era of Trump,” at the conference on Social Media and Antisemitism, Edge Hill University, England.

• Tulane Law celebrated the gift of a 200-year-old manuscript on Civil Law of Louisiana by Louis Moreau Lislet.

• New online from Law and History Review and Cambridge Core: Litigants in the English “Court of Poor Men's Causes,” or Court of Requests, 1515–25, by Laura Flannigan, and The Strange Career of Gross Indecency: Race, Sex, and Law in Colonial Singapore, by J. Y. Chua.

• ICYMI: Adam Hochshild on the Palmer Raids in the New Yorker.  A New York lawyer discovers William Maxwell Evarts.  Dean Strang's radio interview on his new book, Keep the Wretches in Order, on prosecuting Wobblies during World War I.  Thanks a lot, Isaac Royall, Jr.: “Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne demanded that the university pay his country reparations 'for the gains Harvard enjoyed at the expense' of Antiguan slaves” (WaPo). Richard A. Epstein on How Bad Constitutional Law Leads to Bad Economic Regulations, in The Atlantic.  Henry Louis Gates on Redeemers in the NYT.

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