Via the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, we have the following announcement:
The Cromwell Article Prize for best article in legal history published in the calendar year 2024 has been awarded to Kellen R. Funk (Columbia Law School) and Sandra D. Mayson (Penn Carey Law School) for their article Bail at the Founding, published in volume 137 of the Harvard Law Review. Funk and Mayson do a deep dive into the law and practice of bail at the founding, finding that the liberty-protecting law on the books was belied in practice for many accused of crimes, for whom pretrial detention was a routine matter. Through astonishing archival sleuthing, the authors uncover a world of pretrial detention and bail practice that turned not on cash but on reputation. Sureties and unsecured pledges, they find, were the principal mechanisms for those let out of custody pending trial in the early republic.
Bail at the Founding is an archival exploration of great value to the working out of the Constitution’s original public meaning for questions about pretrial detention. It is also a challenge to that project, because it raises deep questions about whether and how the reputation-centered and cash-scarce world of the late eighteenth century can be translated into the cash- and credit-rich world of the twenty first.
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, established by William Nelson Cromwell in 1930, supports work in American legal history. The Foundation’s prize for the legal history article of the year is intended to recognize the growing role of legal history and teaching and research in law schools. This year the prize was selected from articles published in leading student-edited law journals. 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, cromwellfoundation.org.
Congratulations to Professor Funk and Professor Mayson!
-- Karen Tani