Continuing with our notices of the awards, prizes, and fellowships announced at the recent meeting of the American Society for Legal History, we turn now to the Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in a Global Perspective. About this award:
The Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective 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 2025 award when to two scholars: Vladislav Lilić, for “Empire of States: Law and International Order in Ottoman Europe, c. 1830-1912.” (Vanderbilt University, 2024) and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín, for “‘Architects of the Better World’: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of International Order (1919-1998),” (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 2024).
The citation for Lilić’s"Empire of States":
Vladislav Lilić’s superb dissertation, “Empire of States: Law and International Order in Ottoman Europe, c. 1830-1912,” makes a strikingly original contribution to European and global legal history by supplanting familiar narratives of Balkan state formation. The dissertation traces how small Balkan states took shape not through the influence of surging nationalism but through conflicts conducted in the medium of imperial law. Lilić demonstrates that in Montenegro and Serbia varied sets of legal actors—from viziers and Ottoman officials to pastoralists and journeymen—engaged in legal disputes that gradually reset the coordinates of political belonging, property, and public order. As a result, provincial states emerged within the empire before featuring as states in the international order. The dissertation is elegantly structured and based on extensive research in multiple languages and archives, and it combines a deft narrative style with nuanced interventions in the literature on European sovereignty and legal pluralism in global perspective.
The citation for Quiroga-Villamarín's “‘Architects of the Better World’”:
Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín’s outstanding dissertation, “‘Architects of the Better World’: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of International Order (1919–1998),” constitutes a seminal contribution to both the history of international law and global legal history. By tracing what he designates as the “international parliamentary complex” during international law’s move to institutions in the short twentieth century (1919–1998), Quiroga-Villamarín reconstructs the formation of international parliaments from interwar Geneva to the conclusion of the Cold War. Attending to architectural and material templates originating in Europe and their subsequent translations across continents, the dissertation spatializes history and historicizes space, shifting the perspective from figurative “architectures” to tangible built environments. The conceptual framework proves particularly innovative, foregrounding how architecture simultaneously mirrored and enabled aspirations of global order. Drawing on extensive archival research in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, it situates its argument within a rigorous methodological apparatus and advances its findings in elegant and compelling prose.
Congratulations to both winners!
-- Karen Tani
