Among the prizes and awards announced at the recent meeting of the American Historical Association was the Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law and Society ("an annual award for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society, broadly defined"). This year's award went to Alison LaCroix (University of Chicago) for The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (Yale Univ. Press, 2024). The citation:
Gorgeously crafted and scrupulously researched, this original synthesis introduces the “interbellum constitution”: an era, stretching from 1815 to 1865, marked by ferment over the overlapping, unsettled boundaries of local, state, and federal power in the United States. Alison L. LaCroix is utterly persuasive in analyzing the competing “federalisms” that drove public debates over concurrent powers, the regulation of commerce, and states’ rights. Her book illuminates a constitutional maximalism more dynamic, peopled, and capacious than we knew.
Congratulations to Professor LaCroix!
-- Karen Tani
