2021 Plenary Address

The plenary address at the Society’s 2021 annual meeting in New Orleans was given by John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and entitled “Garland’s Million: The Tragedy and Triumph of Legal History.” The plenary was presented at Tulane University, and the Society is deeply grateful to Tulane University President Michael Fitts and Dean David Meyer (Tulane Law School) for their unflagging commitment to sponsoring this event.

John Fabian Witt is the author of a number of books, including American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 and Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was selected for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Professor Witt is currently writing the story of the men and women behind the Garland Fund: the 1920s foundation that quietly financed the efforts that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education.

The 2021 plenary address can be accessed in two ways:

You can watch the plenary here:

You can listen to the audio only here:

Changes to ASLH By-Laws

At the Board of Directors March 2021 Board Meeting, a number of changes were made to the Society’s By-Laws in order to ensure that the By-Laws reflect changes in ASLH policies and practices.

Here is a summary of the changes and their rationale:

  1. The By-Laws did not indicate whether officers can vote on matters before the Board. The proposed changes clarify that the president is a voting member of the Board, but not the secretary, treasurer, or the president elect. The clarification will make it possible to determine when the Board is operating with a quorum and to count votes accurately.
  2. The By-Laws recognize the practice (in place for several years) of holding a Board meeting each year in March and the practice of voting by email on some matters.
  3. The changes reflect approval by the Board to have the chair of the Finance Committee serve as an ex-officio, non-voting member of the Executive Committee. 
  4. The revised By-Laws reference the new Code of Conduct passed by the Board in November 2020.
  5. Changes to the By-Laws reflect the practice (in place for many years) of having the president appoint three members of the Board of Directors to serve on the Executive Committee. 
  6. Minor typos and points of clarification have been fixed or added.

To view these changes, please click here.

Call for Proposals: ASLH-Sponsored Panels at the AHA

Every year, the ASLH is invited to submit sponsored panel proposals for the American Historical Association’s annual meeting. The AHA’s next meeting, in 2022, will be held January 6-9 in New Orleans. If you would like to submit a panel for sponsorship by ASLH, please submit it by February 10 to affiliateproposals@aslh.net. If accepted, the panel proposal will be forwarded by ASLH to the AHA by February 15.

Questions? Use the email address listed above or visit the AHA’s affiliate annual meeting page.

Call for Applications: Student Research Colloquium

The American Society for Legal History (ASLH) will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, November 3, and Thursday, November 4, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The SRC annually brings eight graduate students to the site of the ASLH annual meeting to discuss their in-progress dissertations and articles, under the guidance of distinguished, ASLH-affiliated scholars.

Target applicants include early-post-coursework Ph.D. students and historically minded law students.  Students working in all chronological periods, including ancient, medieval, and early-modern history, and all geographical fields, including non-Western ones, are encouraged to apply.  Applicants who have not yet had an opportunity to interact with the ASLH are welcome, as are those who have not yet received any formal training in legal history.  A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group.  Led by faculty directors, the group will discuss these papers at the colloquium.

The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs.

If you are interested, please electronically submit the following items to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net:

  • a cover letter, describing, among other things, how far along you are and how many years remain in your course of study;
  • an up-to-date CV; and
  • a two-page, single-spaced research statement that begins with a title and proceeds to describe the in-progress research project that you propose to present at the colloquium.

Application deadline: June 1, 2021.

Call for Papers: ASLH 2021 Annual Meeting

The Program Committee of the ASLH invites proposals for complete panels and individual papers for the 2021 meeting to be held November 4-6 in New Orleans. Panels and papers on any facet or period of legal history from anywhere in the world are welcome.  We encourage thematic proposals that transcend traditional periodization and geography.  Due to the cancellation of the Society’s 2020 in-person conference, some of the panel slots for the 2021 conference will be filled by previously accepted proposals. However, there is ample room on the program for new submissions and we look forward to developing a rich and diverse program for our meeting in New Orleans.

The Program Committee welcomes traditional panel proposals (1 chair, 1-2 commentators, 3-4 paper presentations), and other forms of structured presentation for a 90-minute slot, including lightning round (1-2 chairs, 8-12 presenters for a few minutes each on projects in a related field at any stage of development), skills/pedagogical workshop (chair, 3-4 presenters), or roundtable format (1-2 chairs, 3-4 presenters). The Committee will also consider author-meets-reader panel proposals concerning books with a publication date of 2020. We encourage panels that put two or three books in conversation, with up to three commentators total. Requirements for proposals each type of session are outlined below.

Panel Type: Traditional
Format: 1 chair, 3-4 participants, 1-2 commentators
Session abstract/description: Yes, up to 300 words
Individual abstract: Yes, up to 300 words
Panelist CVs: Yes

Panel Type: Lightening Round
Format: 1-2 chairs, 8-12 presenters
Session abstract/description: Yes, 300-500 words
Individual abstract: Yes, up to 300 words
Panelist CVs: Yes

Panel Type: Skills/Pedagogical Session
Format: 1 chair, 3-4 presenters
Session abstract/description: Yes, up to 300 words
Individual abstract: Yes, up to 300 words
Panelist CVs: Yes

Panel Type: Roundtable
Format: 1-2 chairs, 2-3 commentators
Session abstract/description: Yes, 300-500 words
Individual abstract: Yes, up to 300 words
Panelist CVs: Yes

Panel Type: Author meets Readers
Format: 1-2 chairs, 2-3 commentators
Session abstract/description: Yes, 300-500 words
Individual abstract: No
Panelist CVs: Yes

As a general matter, we will not be able to accommodate special scheduling requests, so prospective presenters, chairs, and commentators at the main conference should plan to be available on Friday, November 5, and Saturday, November 6.  The ASLH has a strict one-appearance policy. Prospective participants may submit proposals for multiple sessions, with the understanding that the panel chair will be responsible for promptly finding an appropriate substitute member for any session from which a participant has to withdraw.

The Program Committee encourages panels that include participants from groups historically under-represented in the organization, and that include participants who represent a diversity of rank, experience, and institutional affiliation.

Limited financial assistance (covering airfare and ground transportation only) is available for presenters in need, with priority given to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and scholars from abroad.

The members of the Program Committee are Fahad Bishara, Eliga Gould, Sophia Lee, Tahirih Lee, Alison Lefkovitz, Cynthia Nicoletti, Bhavani Raman, Karl Shoemaker, Simon Stern, and Victor Uribe. The co-chairs of the Program Committee are professors Kristin Collins (collinsk@bu.edu) and Ari Bryen (ari.z.bryen@vanderbilt.edu).

All program presenters must be current members of the Society by the date of the Annual Meeting. All proposals must be submitted through the ASLH website, which will be available to take submissions shortly.

The submission portal will open on February 15, 2021 and will close on March 15, 2021.

New York Historical Society’s Institute for Constitutional History Seminar

The Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History (ICH) seminar, which is produced twice per year, is designed for graduate students and junior faculty in history, political science, law, and related disciplines. There is no tuition or other charge for this seminar. This fall, we will be presenting the seminar virtually:

Topic: “Constitutional Norms, Constitutional Conflict, and Informal Constitutional Change”
Virtual Meeting Dates & Time: Fridays, October 9 and 23, November 6 and 20, 2020 | 2-5 PM Eastern Time
Instructors: Josh Chafetz, professor of law at Georgetown University, and David Pozen, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School

More information about the seminar and how to apply can be found here.

Funding Now Available from the Projects and Proposals Committee

The ASLH welcomes applications to the Projects and Proposal Committee to fund new initiatives in the study, presentation, and production of legal historical scholarship and in the communication of legal history to all its possible publics and audiences.

This year’s applications will be due September 14, 2020. You can find full information about the application process here.

Small Grants for Digital Legal History Research

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.

Call for Proposals: Pre-Conference Workshops or Events

The ASLH sponsors or cosponsors a limited number of part-day or full-day workshops or events in the days before the opening of the Society’s annual conference. The Program Committee welcomes proposals for Chicago 2020, with a deadline for submission of March 27, 2020.

Proposals of 1-2 pages should:

    • explain the intellectual or professional goals of the pre-conference workshop;
    • describe proposed themes and list likely participants; and
    • include information about proposed venue, cost, and other societies or institutions serving as cosponsors, if any

Pre-conference workshops sponsored or cosponsored by the ASLH may be held at other venues or at the conference hotel, space permitting. The Society has a small amount of funding available to assist with costs. We encourage organizers to seek or propose cosponsorship to cover all or most costs.

We especially encourage proposals for pre-conference workshops that will involve scholars in emerging fields or in fields previously underrepresented at ASLH conferences and/or that will promote early career scholarly development.

Pre-conference proposals should be emailed to Program Committee Co-Chairs, professors Ari Bryen (ari.z.bryen@vanderbilt.edu) and Kristin Collins (collinsk@bu.edu).

Call for Papers: Chicago 2020 Conference

The Program Committee of the ASLH invites proposals for complete panels and individual papers for the 2020 meeting to be held November 11-14 in Chicago. Panels and papers on any facet or period of legal history from anywhere in the world are welcome.  We encourage thematic proposals that transcend traditional periodization and geography.

Limited financial assistance (covering airfare and ground transportation only) is available for presenters in need, with priority given to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and scholars from abroad.

Panel proposals should include the following: a c.v. with complete contact information for each person on the panel, including chairs and commentators; 300-word abstracts of individual papers; and a 300-word description of the panel.

The Program Committee also welcomes other forms of structured presentation for a 90-minute slot, including lightning round (1-2 chairs, 8-12 presenters for a few minutes each on projects in a related field at any stage of development), skills/pedagogical workshop (chair, 3-4 presenters), or roundtable format (1-2 chairs, 3-4 presenters). The Committee will also consider author-meets-reader panel proposals concerning books with a publication date of 2019. We encourage panels that put two or three books in conversation, with up to three commentators total. Sufficient information following the general guidelines for panel proposals should be provided for the Committee to assess the merits of the presentation.

Individual paper submissions should consist of an abstract, a draft paper (where possible), and a c.v. Given the number and high quality of panel and other complete sessions submitted, individual papers are much less likely than full sessions to be accepted.  Would-be individual paper submitters are encouraged to connect with other scholars to coordinate the submission of complete session proposals.

The Program Committee additionally seeks proposals for full-day or half-day pre-conference symposia crafted around related themes to augment traditional conference offerings. Please provide a program title, the intended length of program, a program description, a c.v. and contact information for each presenter, and any information technology requirements. The Program Committee is available to consult with organizers of such symposia as they develop their proposal.

As a general matter, we will not be able to accommodate special scheduling requests, so prospective presenters, chairs, and commentators at the main conference should plan to be available on Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14.  The ASLH has a strict one-appearance policy. Prospective participants may submit proposals for multiple sessions, with the understanding that the panel chair will be responsible for promptly finding an appropriate substitute member for any session from which a participant has to withdraw.

The Program Committee encourages panels that include participants from groups historically under-represented in the organization, and that include participants who represent a diversity of rank, experience, and institutional affiliation.

The members of the Program Committee are Fahad Bishara, Eliga Gould, Sophia Lee, Tahirih Lee, Alison Lefkovitz, Cynthia Nicoletti, Bhavani Raman, Karl Shoemaker, Simon Stern, and Victor Uribe. The co-chairs of the Program Committee are professors Kristin Collins (collinsk@bu.edu) and Ari Bryen (ari.z.bryen@vanderbilt.edu).

All program presenters must be current members of the Society by the date of the Annual Meeting. All proposals must be submitted through the ASLH website, which will be available to take submissions shortly. When available, the submission portal will be available here.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, March 27, 2020.

Call for Applications: Student Research Colloquium

The American Society for Legal History (ASLH) will host its seventh annual Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, Nov. 11, and Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020, in Chicago, Illinois. The SRC annually invites eight graduate students to the site of the ASLH’s annual meeting to discuss their in-progress dissertations and articles, under the guidance of distinguished, ASLH-affiliated scholars.

Target applicants include early-post-coursework Ph.D. students and historically minded law students.  Students working in all chronological periods, including ancient and medieval history, and all geographical fields, including Nonwestern ones, are encouraged to apply, as are students who have not yet received any formal training in legal history. The SRC seeks to introduce participating students to legal history, to each other and to the legal-historical scholarly community. Applicants who have not yet had an opportunity to present their work to the ASLH are particularly encouraged to apply.  A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group.  The group will discuss these papers at the colloquium, under the guidance of ASLH-affiliated faculty directors.

The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs.

If you are interested, please electronically submit the following items to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net:

    • a cover letter describing, among other things, how far along you are and how many years remain in your course of study;
    • a CV;
    • a two-page, single-spaced “research statement” that begins with a title and proceeds to describe the in-progress research project that you propose to present at the colloquium; and
    • a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from the other materials.

The application deadline is June 15, 2020. Applicants will be notified by Aug. 1, 2020.

Looking to spread the word about this announcement? Find a PDF you can share with others here!

Legal History Panels at the Upcoming AHA Conference

The upcoming American Historical Association (AHA) annual meeting, which will take place in New York City between January 3-6, 2020 has at least 28 sessions relating to legal history of interest to ASLH members. You can see the full array of legal history-related programming at the AHA by viewing their “guide book” here–use the arrow in the upper right corner to see the complete list.

To learn more about this conference, including details on registration, the full program, and shockingly reasonable (for New York) hotel rates, head over to the AHA’s site.

2019 Annual Meeting Recap

Famously nicknamed “the hub of the solar system” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston has served over the centuries as a center of legal events and controversies that have shaped American legal history. The ASLH was delighted to return to Boston for its 2019 annual meeting, which was held at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel from November 21, 2019 to November 23, 2019.

Program committee chairs Daniel Sharfstein and Michelle McKinley organized 48 panel sessions and 12 author-meets-reader sessions in addition to a number of pre-conference workshops. We were joined by 441 registered participants.

The meeting was sponsored by Harvard Law School and Boston University Law School, and the Plenary Lecture was delivered by Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard Law School.

As always, the ASLH was delighted to recognize exceptional scholarship in legal history and service to the Society by awarding a number of prizes, honors, and fellowships at our annual luncheon. Read more about our wonderful prize and fellowship winners here. And check out photographs of the proceedings below!

2019 Annual Meeting Prize, Honors, and Fellowship Winners

The ASLH is delighted to announce our 2019 prize, honors, and fellowship winners!

Cromwell Dissertation Prize
Winner: Jonathan Lande, “Disciplining Freedom: U.S. Army Slave Rebels and Emancipation During the Civil War”

At least since William Cooper Nell penned The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution in 1855, historians have linked African-American military service with manhood and citizenship. Black regiments in the Civil War have received considerable attention. Black service has rightly been deemed central to the North’s victory and an important step for both African-Americans’ assertion of sacrifice for and citizenship in the post-Civil War world. In his pathbreaking dissertation “Disciplining Freedom: U.S. Army Slave Rebels and Emancipation in the Civil War,” Jonathan Lande boldly argues that the conventional account is incomplete. Centering on the records of the courts martial and contextualizing them with administrative and personal sources, Lande uncovers deep northern anxiety about arming the formerly enslaved. Despite free labor ideological commitments, northern officers carried with them the albatross of slavery and white supremacy into courts martial proceedings against black soldiers. The courts martial produced minimalistic records, seemingly straightforward, and therefore deceptively equitable in their treatment of all soldiers, regardless of color. Lande’s textured reading of the records reveals them as sites of conflict. Far from being “schools” about the value of equal justice for the freedmen, these courts martial proceedings were means to discipline the formerly enslaved. For their part, freedmen continued on in their old traditions of resistance against oppression. Their experience of freedom and understanding of civic membership, Lande argues, was, in important ways, born of this struggle.

Cromwell Article Prize
Maggie Blackhawk, “Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State,” 127 Yale Law Journal 1538 (2018)

“Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State,” by Maggie McKinley–now Blackhawk–of the Penn Law School in the Yale Law Journal, makes a robust and compelling case that finds the constitutional basis of the administrative state in core republican ideals grounded in the First Amendment’s protection of the right to petition Congress for relief. The article combines exhaustive archival and empirical research with a deft handling of administrative law and judicial process to offer provocative interventions into much of our received wisdom in those fields.

This article, which runs to a hundred pages, is an ambitious and impressive undertaking whose impact can be best appreciated as two skillfully combined articles. The first is an empirical study grounded in the “North America Petitions Project,” an original dataset compiled by a group of which Blackhawk was a co-principal investigator. The project assembled a database of some 500,000 petitions submitted to Congress from the 1790s through 1950, offering “an extended longitudinal view of the petition process.” Second, the article is also a robust intervention into several ongoing historical and legal debates. Above all, it rejects criticisms of the modern administrative state as a violation of constitutional separation of powers and a usurpation of authority – even as unconstitutional – and challenges Chadha’s holding the legislative veto to be unconstitutional. A citation such as this cannot do justice to the many virtues of this article, which ranges over more than two centuries of American legal history while engaging areas of several lively constitutional dispute. It is a worthy choice for such an important award.

Cromwell Book Prize
Winner: Kimberly M. Welch, Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018)

Black Litigants is a tour de force of meticulous and arduous archival work, and the slow piecing together of documents to construct a nuanced, sophisticated and rich narrative. The work produces new historical knowledge regarding how free and enslaved black litigants in the antebellum South used local courts to make civil claims regarding debt, property, and contracts. Adding to this archival feat is how Welch writes with a strong and confident voice exploring what these cases tell us about law, race, and the slaveholding South.

Using local court documents from two parishes in Louisiana and two counties in Mississippi, Welsh constructs a detailed narrative of how some black people used courts to sue white people in local courts. The work incorporates and is in dialogue with other excellent scholarship on enslaved people who brought freedom suits. Yet where freedom suits had such significant consequences, Welch locates and analyzes more mundane and everyday claims. In fact, one of Welch’s central arguments is the very fact that such cases were unexceptional and that black plaintiffs won suits against whites on a regular basis. Welch carefully analyzes why this might be the case simultaneously recognizing the agency of black litigants, how law propped up and structured white supremacy, and how law was not hegemonic. Rather Black Litigants illustrates that judges, lawyers, and white people more generally had multiple competing interests and that, at least at times, ideas of property won out over, or at least co-existed with, ideas of white supremacy and slaveholding.

Welch provides a rich social history of local southern courts while also conveying a subtle and nuanced understanding of what law even is. She theorizes that law is a highly stylized language of claim making, a discourse, a way of shaping and telling stories that courts, lawyers, and others could recognize. Indeed, Welch herself provides us with new and significant stories that enhance our understanding of how local on-the-ground law operates and the spaces in which black litigants could assert their personhood, even citizenship, and partake in the public legal sphere.

Dudziak Prize
Co-winner: O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C. Law and Family (http://earlywashingtondc.org/) and its Anna Film (http://annwilliamsfilm.com/)

Co-winner: The Scottish Court of Sessions Digital Archive (http://scos.law.virginia.edu/)

The O Say Can You See Project merited the Dudziak Prize because it does more than merely put content online that could be digested in print form. Rather, it uses the internet platform to enable others to access 509 D.C. Circuit Court, Maryland state, and U.S. Supreme Court petitions for freedom. The creators have also modeled more than 55,000 relationships between the participants in these cases. They also included engaging essays by legal historians about these sources and the broader historical context. And, in 2018, the creators unveiled an 11-minute animated film, Anna, which has been widely used in secondary schools to teach students about the history of slavery and freedom. Overall, we were impressed by how this project harnessed the power of new media to excite the imaginations of current and future legal historians.

The Scottish Court of Sessions Digital Archive merited the Dudziak Prize because it is an ambitious multi-institutional effort to digitize Scottish sessions papers from the 1750s to 1840s, which are held by the University of Virginia Law Library and the Library of Congress. The project, which went public in 2018, consists of high-quality scans of approximately 10,000 documents, all expertly tagged using open source and exportable programming. These documents are especially valuable sources because they contain rich narratives of underrepresented groups in the British Atlantic world during the era of the American Revolution. This new archive should help facilitate research on women, enslaved persons, and laborers. Overall, we were impressed by the scholarly significance of this digital archive for the field of British Atlantic studies.

Honorary Fellows
Sally Falk Moore, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Anthropology Emerita at Harvard University and Affiliated Professor of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School

Rebecca Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan

David Sugarman, Emeritus Professor of Law at the Law School of Lancaster University and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London

Craig Joyce Medal Recipient
Rayman Solomon, University Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus, Rutgers-Camden

John Phillip Reid Book Prize
Winner: Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Deeply researched, beautifully crafted, and elegantly written, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America upends traditional narratives of the development of citizenship. Martha Jones shows how African Americans used legal and political strategies to claim rights, connect them to citizenship, and solidify their status as Americans. The book is an exemplary recovery of bottom-up constitutional advocacy pursued not only through litigation and social movements, but also through the aspirations and practices of ordinary people. As Jones reminds us, the law of the United States has been shaped as much by its people as its legal professionals and elected officials.

Peter Gonville Stein Book Award
Winner: Khaled Fahmy, In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (University of California Press, 2018)

Exploring the intersection of law and medicine, In Quest of Justice masterfully rewrites the legal history of nineteenth-century Egypt. The book persuasively argues that legal reform in the modern Middle East was tied to the centralization of state power rather than efforts to adopt Western legal norms. Fahmy’s focus on the siyasa courts and their neglected documents corrects a historiographical bias towards privileging the history of shari‘a courts. While important, shari‘a courts were just one of many legal orders that existed in the Middle East in this period. Fahmy demonstrates that the siyasa courts are vital for our understanding of the legal transformations of the nineteenth century. The book moves seamlessly through background information, historiography, case studies, and new findings that revise the field.

Honorable Mention: Rohit De, A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Surrency Article Prize
Catherine L. Evans, “Heart of Ice: Indigenous Defendants and Colonial Law in the Canadian North-West,” LHR 36: 2 (May 2018): 199-234

Catherine L. Evans’ essay offers a compelling account of a deeply eerie incident in the late nineteenth-century Canadian Northwest Territory, the killing of an older woman believed to be a wendigo (malevolent spirit) by three Cree men who were acting in accordance with Cree law, their subsequent criminal trial, and the balance struck between Cree and colonial law by colonial officials in mitigation. The article offers an extremely subtle assessment of legal pluralism on a colonial frontier by arguing that the trial of the wendigo killers must be incorporated with the better-known corpus of trials held in the aftermath of Louis Riel’s contemporaneous territorial “rebellion,” which displayed a completely different face of the colonial state. This memorable essay avoids easy answers without dismissing prior scholarship, exhibits excellent research, and demands that the reader consider deeply both the brutalities and the cracks in colonial law.

Sutherland Article Prize
Winner: Patrick Weil and Nicholas Handler, “Revocation of Citizenship and Rule of Law: How Judicial Review Defeated Britain’s First Denaturalization Regime,” LHR 36: 2 (May 2018): 295-354

Denaturalization, a policy which deprives subjects of their citizenship, originated in the United States (1906). Adopted by Britain via the Nationality and Status of Aliens Acts of 1914 and 1918, it fell out of use after the Second World War but remained on the statute books. While the power to revoke citizenship was not used at all between 1973 and 2000, in the past decade the Home Office has demonstrated a new willingness to apply the law, revoking the citizenship of ‘at least 373 individuals’ in that period. Weil and Handler’s article explores the history of denaturalization, considering both its decline and recent resurgence. They argue that a provision of the BNSA Act of 1918 created a system of judicial review for decisions made within the Home Office that limited and eventually extinguished the powers of that office where denaturalization was concerned. Legislative changes in 2002 replaced the committee-based review, which had served to protect individual rights, with a ‘significantly more deferential’ and often secretive form of oversight. Original in terms of both its primary sources and argument, Weil and Handler’s article also offers an intriguing take on the broader issue of national belonging which has garnered so much attention in recent years in Anglo-American scholarship.

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Papp Kamali, “Trial by Ordeal by Jury in Medieval England, or Saints and Sinners in Literature and Law,” in Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of William Ian Miller (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

Cromwell Fellowships
Cromwell Fellowships were awarded to the following recipients:

Michelle Bezark, PhD Candidate, Northwestern University: “’A Bill for Better Babies’: The Sheppard-Towner Act and Building a Modern Welfare State”
Hardeep Dhillon, PhD Candidate, History, Harvard University: “Indians on the Move: Law, Borders, and Freedoms at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”
Signe Fourmy, PhD Candidate, History, University of Texas at Austin: “They Chose Death Over Slavery: Enslaved Women and Infanticide in the Antebellum South”
Jose Argueta Funes, JD, Yale Law School, PhD Candidate, Princeton University: “Past as Authority: Law, Property, and Reform in Hawai’i, 1840-1920”
Jamie Grischkan, JD, University of Michigan Law School; PhD Candidate, History, Boston University: “Banking, Law, and American Liberalism: The Rise and Regulation of Bank Holding Companies in the Twentieth Century”
Lauren van Haaften-Schick, PhD Candidate, Art History, Cornell University: “The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement: Origins and Afterlives in Art and Law”
Amanda Kleintop, PhD, History, Northwestern University: “The Balance of Freedom: Abolishing Property Rights in Slaves after the US Civil War”
David Korostyshevsky, PhD Candidate, History, University of Minnesota: “’Incapable of Managing His Estate’: Habitual Drunkenness and Guardianship Law in Nineteenth-Century America”
Naama Maor, PhD Candidate, History, University of Chicago: “Delinquent Parents: Power and Responsibility in Progressive-Era Juvenile Justice”
Bharath Palle, S.J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School: “Wesley Hohfeld and the Struggle for a Legal Science”
Natalie Shibley, PhD, History and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania: “Race, Homosexuality, and Military Justice, 1941-1993”
Lila Teeters, PhD Candidate, History, University of New Hampshire: “Native Citizens: The Contest over U.S. Indigenous Citizenship, 1880-1924”
Lael Weinberger, JD/PhD Candidate, History, University of Chicago: “The Politics of International Law in the United States, 1912-1954”

Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars
Ofra Bloch, J.S.D. Candidate, Yale, “The Untold History of Israel’s Affirmative Action for Arab Citizens, 1946-1968”
Brianna Lane Nofil, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia, “‘Chinese Jails’ and the Birth of Immigration Detention for Profit, 1900-1905”

New Talking Legal History Podcast: Will Hustwit

In this episode, Siobhan talks with William P. Hustwit about his book Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is the Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Holmes (1969), Integration Now explores how studying Alexander enhances understandings of the history underlying school desegregation.

This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.

ASLH By-Laws Changes

The ASLH Board has voted to approve two revisions to our by-laws.

First, in March and October, the by-laws were amended in Article I Section IV to explicitly describe a new membership cycle that the Society has adopted. The old membership cycle followed the calendar year, but this new membership cycle will more closely resemble the Society’s actual calendar. By shifting to this new membership cycle, we hope to have membership terms make more sense both to our members and our officers. Currently, members who join in the fall are prohibited by our calendar from participating in Society elections. This change to the by-laws will eliminate that problem.

Second, in October, the by-laws were amended in Article II Section V to provide for the creation of new officer position, the outreach director. The Director of Outreach position will unify several growing and increasingly important dimensions of the Society’s efforts in service to the field. We have a fully redesigned website, and the Director of Outreach would ensure that the new website accurately reflects our message, including by listing up-to-date, high quality information about Society events and trends in the field. The Outreach Director would utilize the website, and possibly other media, to communicate about newsworthy programs and awards, including but not limited to the Hurst Institute, the Wallace Johnson First Book Program, our many pre-conference workshops, our journal and book series, and our members’ notable achievements.

To view these changes, please click here.

Call for Papers: Law and Society Annual Conference

The Law and Society Association is now accepting proposals for its upcoming annual conference, which will be held May 28-31, 2020 in Denver. Full information about the conference is available on their website.

Polls Now Open in Annual ASLH Elections

Voting is underway in the annual ASLH elections and will continue until September 22 at 5PM EST. These elections allow members to choose their representatives for President-Elect, Board of Directors, Graduate Student representative, and Nominating Committee.

Instructions about how to vote were sent to members via the email addresses on file with Cambridge University Press. If you believe you should have received an invitation to vote, but have not been able to locate your invitation, please contact ASLH Secretary Anne Twitty at atwitty@olemiss.edu.

Call for Applications: Harvard University Seeks Faculty

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University seeks to appoint up to four professors who study race, ethnicity and/or migration with focus on Asian American, Latinx, and/or Islam in America Studies. We seek candidates who work in one or more of these areas or who do comparative work across them. These positions may be offered at either the rank of tenured full professor or as tenure-track positions, and will be located in appropriate FAS departments and programs in the humanities and social sciences. Appointed faculty will teach and advise at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The appointments are expected to begin on July 1, 2020.

Tenure-track applicants should apply at http://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/9186

Tenured-level applicants should apply at http://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/9187

Basic Qualifications:

Doctoral degree

Additional Qualifications:

(Tenure-track) Demonstrated strong commitment to teaching and research; and experience working with and teaching diverse students.

(Tenured-level) Intellectual leadership in the field; potential for significant contributions to the Faculty, University, and wider scholarly community; demonstrated excellence in teaching and mentoring; and experience working with and teaching diverse students.

Special Instructions

Please submit the following materials through the ARIES portal at http://academicpositions.harvard.edu. Candidates are encouraged to apply by October 1, 2019; applications will be reviewed until the position is filled.

1. Cover letter

2. Curriculum vitae

3. List of courses recently taught

4. Research statement

5. Teaching and mentorship statement

6. A statement describing efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including past, current, and anticipated future contributions in the areas of teaching and research.

7. (Tenure-track applicants only) Names and contact information of three referees, who will be asked by a system-generated email to upload a letter of recommendation once the candidate’s application has been submitted. Three letters of recommendation are required, and the application is considered complete only when at least three letters have been received.

Draft Program for the 2019 Annual Meeting Now Available

Program Committee chairs Daniel Sharfstein and Michelle McKinley have been hard at work generating the program for our upcoming 2019 annual conference, which will take place November 21-24 in Boston, Massachusetts. You can now view a draft of this program.

For additional details about the 2019 annual conference, including information about registration and pre-conference workshops as well as a terrific travel guide prepared by out Local Arrangements Committee, please click here. See you in Boston!

Call for Papers: Edited Volume on the Impact of Law’s History

Marcus Harmes of the University of Southern Queensland’s Open Access College, Jeremy Patrick of the University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice, and Sarah McKibbin of the University of Southern Queensland’s School of Law and Justice are developing an edited volume on legal history and seeking contributors.

See the call for papers for full details and submission information.

New Talking Legal History Podcast: Hendrik Hartog

Did you know ASLH has a podcast? It’s true! Talking Legal History is hosted by Siobhan M. M. Barco, a former litigator and current doctoral student in history at Duke University, whose work focuses on the space where law, gender, and print culture intersect.

In her most recent episode, she interviews Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North (UNC Press, 2018). The Trouble with Minna is also used as a vessel to explore some of the topics discussed in Law and Social Inquiry’s May 2019 “Review Symposium: Retrospective on the Work of Hendrik Hartog.” Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus at Princeton University.

This episode is the first in a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.

Want to catch up on past episodes? Check out the full back catalog on the Talking Legal History page on our site.

Travel Guide for 2019 Annual Meeting

Greetings Legal Historians! Welcome to Boston!

Famously nicknamed “the hub of the solar system” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston has served over the centuries as a center of legal events and controversies that have shaped American legal history. The 1741 Writs of Assistance case and 2003’s Goodridge v. Department of Public Health were both decided about a mile from our meeting site in the Boston Park Plaza Hotel.

The Boston area’s many law schools and history departments are home to some of the longest running legal history workshops and seminars in the country. We hope you’ll find time while you’re here to visit some of the area’s remarkable libraries, archival collections, and museums. The Boston Public Library—worth a visit for the building alone—is just a short walk from the hotel.

Please stay tuned for details about our two great receptions. Harvard Law School will host Friday’s plenary and reception at its campus at 1585 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Boston University Law School will host Saturday evening’s reception at its campus at 765 Commonwealth Avenue. Many thanks to these outstanding institutions for being such generous hosts!

HOTEL

The Boston Plaza Hotel is well-located on the eastern edge of the Back Bay, just steps from Boston’s beautiful Public Garden, the shops of Newbury Street, and a short cab ride to the terrific trattorias of the North End (the heart of Italian Boston) or the excellent restaurants and bars of the South End. The Esplanade along the Charles River offers beautiful vistas and easy paths for runners and walkers https://www.bostonparkplaza.com/.

NOVEMBER WEATHER

November can be surprisingly mild or shockingly cold – so plan ahead. The average high temperature is 52̊ and the average low is 38̊, but who knows these days? For up-to-the-minute forecasts, check out https://darksky.net/forecast/42.3583,-71.0603/us12/en.

TRANSPORTATION

Getting to Boston:

By air: Most travelers to Boston come into Logan Airport which is very close to the center of town and relatively easy to reach by public transportation. Some flights also come into Manchester, NH, and TF Green Airport in Providence, RI, but it is more difficult to get into Boston from these airports.

By train: Boston is served by Amtrak along the Acela and North East Regional lines. Most trains come into South Station from which it is easy to get around the city by public transportation. Boston is also connected to Providence and many points in the Boston metro-area by the MBTA commuter rail. Some commuter rails come into South Station. Trains from the North (including Amtrak trains coming from Maine or New Hampshire) stop at North Station.

By Bus: A number of bus lines (Greyhound, Peter Pan, Megabus, Bolt Bus, etc., as well as regional bus lines linking cities in MA, NH, ME) also come into South Station. The bus station is in a separate building that is a very short (outdoor) walk from the train station and T station.

For further details: If you’re traveling by car, or need further information, see this useful website, https://www.bostonusa.com/plan-your-trip/getting-here/.

From Logan Airport

By Public Transport:

Silver Line: Boston’s regional mass transit system is called the MBTA (locals call it the “T”). The easiest way to get to the hotel from the airport on the T is to take the (free) Silver Line shuttle that runs from the airport to South Station. The shuttle stops at all the terminals outside baggage claim on the lower level.

From South Station, you can take the Red Line outbound train, toward Alewife/Cambridge. At the “Park Street” stop, you can either transfer to an outbound Green Line train (there are 5 different Green Line trains, but all of them take you to the Arlington stop near the hotel), or you can walk from the Park Street stop to the hotel, which is .5 miles away. (Note: The Green Line is notoriously slow on its outbound route, so you may save time by walking to the hotel from the Park Street station.)

Blue Line: You can also take an airport shuttle bus to the “Airport” stop on the Blue Line of the T. From there you would take an inbound Blue Line train and transfer to any outbound Green Line train at Government Center.

By Taxi or Rideshare:

There are taxi stands at every terminal at Logan. A ride from the airport to the Park Plaza Hotel should take between 15-30 minutes and cost between $25-35 depending upon traffic. Note: If you are arriving at rush hour, traffic can be quite bad!

There are also well-posted signs directing travelers to ride-share pickup locations for Lyft, Uber, etc.

Getting around town:

Maps: For interactive and downloadable maps of Boston and its transportation systems, see https://www.bostonusa.com/mapexplorer/

  • The “T”:

While the T is not the most efficient or effective subway system, the Park Plaza Hotel is at the center of the network, making it relatively easy to get anywhere the T goes without much trouble.

The Orange Line runs south to Jamaica Plain. The Green Line branches out westward to Boston University, Boston College, Brookline, and Newton. The Red Line runs south to Quincy and northwest to Cambridge and Somerville. The Blue Line runs northeast past the airport to East Boston and Revere Beach.

There is also a dense and effective network of buses that fill gaps in the subway service.

Though it may be less useful for short trips, it is worth noting that the commuter rail connects central Boston with some areas that would otherwise be hard to reach by public transportation. The trains run south to Providence connecting with the South Shore on the way. They also run west to Newton, Concord, and most of the western suburbs. And they run north to the North Shore and Cape Ann.

For more information on the T (including a map of the subway system) and getting around Boston, see: https://www.bostonusa.com/plan-your-trip/getting-around/

  • By Car:

Boston is not an easy place to drive if you’ve never been here before. The streets are often narrow, and we pride ourselves on navigating a confounding warren of one-way streets which can easily turn you around. Parking is not easy and the various cities in the metro-area all have their own resident parking restrictions. (It pays to read the parking signs carefully!)

That said, GPS makes driving easier and it’s usually possible to find a parking spot. Most meters are now connected to a parking app which allows you to pay for parking by phone.

Boston is well served by traditional taxi companies, Lyft and Uber. There are also a number of car-sharing companies with cares around town.

For more on driving in Boston, see https://www.bostonusa.com/plan-your-trip/getting-around/.

  • By Bike:

While it’s not the easiest city to bike in, Boston is still filled with bikes and, because the distances are short, it is easy to get around. There are excellent bike baths along the Charles River and also along the old railroad line all the way out to the old battlefields of Lexington and Concord.

Boston has a number of bike sharing companies operating in and around the city. The most common one is BlueBikes https://bluebikes.com which operates a set of bike-share stations, but there are plenty of dockless Lime Bikes and Ant Bikes around as well https://boston.curbed.com/2018/8/2/17642242/boston-bike-share-dockless-where-to-find.

  • By Foot:

It’s often easier and more fun to explore Boston on foot. Grab a map and explore, or check out organized walking tours on the “Freedom Trail” https://www.thefreedomtrail.org , or “Boston By Foot” http://www.bostonbyfoot.org/.

Boston: A city of neighborhoods. You’ll be staying in the heart of downtown, within easy reach of many restaurants and attractions. But if you want to explore, Boston is a city made up of distinctive neighborhoods, each with its own character. For an overview of Boston’s neighborhood, see https://www.bostonusa.com/about-boston/boston-neighborhoods/.

ATTRACTIONS

You don’t have to go far to enjoy Boston’s many attractions. Historic sites, museums, music, brewpubs – all are within easy walking distance from the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Here are a few choice sites near the hotel:

Here Boston claims the country’s oldest park and first public botanical garden. The Common, founded in 1634, serves as a gathering place for protest and celebration, and is speckled with monuments commemorating Massachusetts history. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, honoring the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry unit and their leader. Other spots of interest include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and Frog Pond. The latter of these will be undergoing its seasonal transition from reflecting pool to skating rink. The Common also serves as first stop of the Freedom Trail (see below). Boston’s Public Garden, located next to the Common, was founded in 1837 is home to the city’s avian icons, the Swan Boats and the Make Way for Ducklings statues.

The Boston Public Library is equally famous for its architecture and the treasures behind its doors. Opened in 1852, the library enjoys status on the National Register of Historic Places and boasts sweeping staircases, grand windows, and intricate murals. Visitors are welcome to roam on their own or take part in a free, one-hour art and architecture tour. The library offers rotating exhibits of its rare books and documents and boasts a restaurant and two cafes. For tour times, see: https://www.bpl.org/visit-central-library/art-tours/

The Freedom Trail is amongst Boston’s most iconic of attractions and welcomes over 4 million visitors each year. The Trail is a 2.5 mile red line that connects visitors to 16 stops, chronicling 250 years of the city’s history. Sites include the Faneuil Hall, the Boston Massacre Site, the Old State House, and the USS Constitution. Make sure you stop by the Granary Burying Ground, which serves as the final resting place for the likes of John Hancock, Paul Revere, James Otis, and Samuel Adams. The Freedom Trail’s website includes sample itineraries based on the amount of time available to visitors. See also the Black Heritage Trail, the Irish Heritage Trail, the Native American Trail, and the Boston Equality Trail.

For more information on attractions, see https://www.bostonusa.com/things-to-do/.

For special events in Boston during the week of Nov. 17-24, check out the events calendar at https://www.thebostoncalendar.com/.

In addition to the sites close to the hotel, check out the Local Arrangements Committee’s favorite Boston attractions:

Eddy was the founder of the Christian Science religion and Boston is home to the “Original Mother Church,” built in 1894 and located in the Christian Science Plaza at 200 Massachusetts Avenue (about 1 mile from the hotel). The Mapparium is a huge, 3-storied stained-glass world globe, created in 1935. You can walk through the globe and see the world as it was organized in 1935. Very cool! The Library has other interesting exhibits.

Located in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, the museum houses the eclectic art collection of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), including works by John Singer Sargent, Sandro Botticelli, James McNeill Whistler, and Giotto. A new wing designed by Renzo Piano leads seamlessly to the Venetian-inspired palazzo housing the core of the collection. You won’t want to miss the stunning courtyard, with ancient sculptures surrounded by thoroughly modern (and breathtakingly beautiful) plantings, changed seasonally by the Gardner’s gardeners. As if that weren’t enough, there is the unsolved mystery of the great art theft of 1990. Empty frames remain on the walls in the hope that the stolen works of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and others will one day be returned.

The MFA is one of the great art museums in the United States and one of Boston’s most important cultural institutions. In the words of the MFA’s website: “Today the MFA is one of the most comprehensive art museums in the world; the collection encompasses nearly 500,000 works of art. We welcome more than one million visitors each year to experience art from ancient Egyptian to contemporary, special exhibitions, and innovative educational programs.”

The ICA is housed in an architecturally significant building on the waterfront and serves as Boston’s venue for “outstanding contemporary art in all media, including visual art exhibitions, music, film, video, and performance.”

A huge reserve out past Jamaica Plain. Amazing walks through all manner of trees, shrubs, flowers. Worth the trip out to the end of the Orange Line.

They run a bunch places where you can rent kayaks and canoes by the hour. The one near Kendall Square in Cambridge is especially cool because you can kayak in the shadow of Beacon Hill, looking at the Boston skyline, the famous Citgo sign, etc.

Want to extend your trip and explore beyond Boston? There are tons of options! Visit www.bostonusa.com/plan-your-trip/trip-ideas/beyond-boston/ or check out the Local Arrangements Committee’s favorite side trips:

  • Portsmouth, NH

Travel north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a quaint city bordering Maine founded in 1623 with great history, restaurants and shops along the Piscataqua River. If you go, don’t miss the African Burying Ground and the Black Heritage Trail. Portsmouth is less than 60 miles away and accessible through C&J Trailways. Buses leave hourly to Newburyport, Massachusetts (another great side trip) and to Portsmouth, NH, from South Station. For more information, visit http://www.goportsmouth.com.

  • White Mountains, NH

If you want to get out of the city and enjoy nature, the White Mountains of NH, about two hours north, are a great option, with lovely drives and plenty of hiking. For more information, visit https://www.visitwhitemountains.com.

  • Salem, Massachusetts

If you want to explore the history of the Salem Witch Trials (and just as interesting, the marketing of the witch trials!) head 25 miles northeast to Salem, Massachusetts, https://www.salem.org/ . While in Salem, check out the fabulous Peabody Essex Museum, founded in 1799 by wayfaring ship captains. For more information, visit https://www.pem.org/about-pem.

  • Concord, Massachusetts

Described by author Henry James as “the biggest little place in America”, Concord was home to many leading 19th-century writers. Check out “Author’s Ridge” in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where you will find the gravesites of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others. For more information, visit https://concordma.gov/1956/Sleepy-Hollow-Cemetery.

  • Newport, RI

Just an hour and a half south of Boston by car, Newport, RI, boasts ocean-side mansions from the days of the “robber barons,” many viewable along the city’s famed Cliff Walk and also open for guided tours. For more information, visit https://www.discovernewport.org/.

  • Portland, ME

Just a little further north from Portsmouth, Portland is a vibrant town with a gorgeous old port district. Along with lighthouses, rocky bluffs, seagulls, and excellent minor league baseball, Portland’s main claim to fame is that it was named Bon Appetit’s “Restaurant City of the Year” in 2018. For more information, visit https://www.bonappetit.com/story/portland-maine-city-of-the-year-2018. It’s actually an easy train ride away from Boston on Amtrak from North station.

RESTAURANTS

You won’t go hungry in Boston! There’s something for every palate.

Within walking distance of the Boston Park Plaza, check out:

Back Bay Sandwiches (https://www.backbaysandwich.com/)
This is a great spot for a quick lunch or early breakfast. Back Bay offers classic deli options as well as signature Italian and Back-Bay themed sandwiches. Their most popular offerings might be their breakfast sandwiches, though, and the spot receives daily deliveries from OMG! Bagels.

Flour (https://flourbakery.com)
Local bakery with a delicious, creative menu at numerous locations. Great for breakfast or lunch, and anytime is a good time for their legendary sticky bun.

Grill 23 & Bar (https://grill23.com)
High-end Back Bay steakhouse.

Parish Cafe (https://parishcafe.com/)
Just a three minute walk from the Park Plaza, this restaurant offers a wide range of options, including vegetarian and meat entrees, unusual sandwiches, and generous salads. All come highly recommended. This is also a good spot for a drink at the bar, and Parish offers a wide range of beers, wine, and cocktails.

Ostra (http://ostraboston.com/)
Ostra is one of Boston’s premier Mediterranean seafood restaurants. Dubbed “luxurious” and “elegant” by the Boston Globe, Ostra receives high marks for both its cuisine and ambiance. The restaurant features live piano music and is a popular pre-show spot for Bostonians. Reservations are recommended.

For a more complete guide to restaurants, see https://boston.eater.com and https://www.bostonusa.com/restaurants.

Check out the Local Arrangements Committee’s favorite restaurants:

B & G Oysters (http://bandgoysters.com)

Bow Market (https://www.bowmarketsomerville.com/)
Hipsters! Artisanal pierogis! Natural wine! If you want to have some great provisions and get a view of the particular Somerville flavor of excellent beards and funny bikes, this is your spot.

Chickadee (https://www.chickadeerestaurant.com)
“New England Born, Mediterranean Inspired.”

Gustazo Cuban Kitchen and Bar (https://www.gustazo-cubancafe.com/cambridge/)
Great Cambridge spot.

Neptune Oyster (http://www.neptuneoyster.com/)
In the North End, which can feel like a tourist trap, Neptune Oyster is great, though it can be hard to get a seat.

No. 9 Park (http://www.no9park.com)
Elegant, quiet, delicious, in Beacon Hill.

Picco (https://www.piccorestaurant.com)
Good pizza in the South End.

Sarma (https://sarmarestaurant.com)
Further afield in Somerville, but inspired Mediterranean cuisine.

The Table at Season to Taste (https://www.cambridgetable.com/)
Tiny but nearly perfect. It’s in deepest Cambridge and can be hard to get a table, but worth it if you need a place for a lovely night and want to eat well. Reserve well in advance.

Toro (https://www.toro-restaurant.com)
Excellent Tapas in the South End.

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES 

Boston Athenaeum. Est. 1807. One of the oldest (and most elegant) independent libraries in the nation. For more information, visit https://bostonathenaeum.org.

Boston Public Library. The “BPL,” designed by Charles Follen McKim, is beautiful. And inside, you’ll find one of the nation’s best research collections. For more information, visit https://www.bpl.org.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Part of the presidential system, it houses a vast trove of documents relating to its namesake plus the personal papers of Ernest Hemingway. The Massachusetts State Archives are a short walk away. For more information, visit https://www.jfklibrary.org.

Massachusetts Historical Society. Founded in 1791, it is the nation’s first historical society. For more information, visit https://www.masshist.org.

The Social Law Library. Est. 1803, it is one of the oldest law libraries in the United States, located in the historical John Adams Courthouse, where the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts interprets the oldest continually functioning written constitution in the world. For more information, visit https://www.socialaw.com.

Further Afield:

American Antiquarian Society. If you want something published, printed, or written in America before 1876, odds are it’s at the AAS. In all likelihood, they own the original. Located in Worcester, Mass., about an hour’s drive from the hotel. For more information, visit https://www.americanantiquarian.org.

Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. Strong collections on maritime history, New England history, Asian culture, and Native Americans. About 50 minutes drive from the hotel. For more information, visit https://www.pem.org/visit/library.

New Talking Legal History Podcast: Paul Finkelman

Did you know ASLH has a podcast? It’s true! Talking Legal History is hosted by Siobhan M. M. Barco, a former litigator and current doctoral student in history at Duke University, whose work focuses on the space where law, gender, and print culture intersect.

In her most recent episode, she interviews Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz College, about his book Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court. Finkelman is a specialist on the history of slavery and the law. He is also the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books on a broad range of topics including American Jewish history, American legal history, constitutional law, and legal issues surrounding baseball.

Want to catch up on past episodes? Check out the full back catalog on the Talking Legal History page on our site.

Call for Proposals: New initiatives in Legal History

The Projects and Proposals Committee of the American Society for Legal History invites proposals for the funding of new initiatives in the study, presentation, and production of legal historical scholarship and in the communication of legal history to all its possible publics and audiences. It is the mission of the committee to find ways to bring talented new voices into our field, to promote novel forms of scholarly interchange, to support pedagogical experiments in legal history, and to seed new forms and venues for public history.

We welcome a broad range of proposals. We will consider providing support for conferences (including the costs of bringing together participants who could not otherwise afford to attend), scholarly publications, museum exhibits, pedagogical experiments, or any number of other collective pursuits. We encourage projects that seek to internationalize legal history by widening the study of legal history or by bringing a global array of scholars and students of legal history into conversation with one another. We also invite projects that promise to bring a younger generation of scholars and students into the field.

Most of the grants we have awarded have been less than 5000 dollars. Ordinarily, we would expect that projects would have other institutional collaborators and/or cosponsors (including home universities). Proposals may come from educational institutions or from informal groups or networks of individuals. In most cases, someone involved in the proposal will be a member of the Society, and we especially encourage proposals from members pursuing new endeavors or outreach in the field. Please note that we are not a funding source for ongoing and recurrent activities of the field or of the Society and will not recommend for funding projects that have already been funded at the recommendation of the committee three times. We do not support individual research projects.

The deadline for receiving applications is September 16, 2019. The committee will then review the proposals and recommend a list to the Board of Directors of the Society in preparation for its meeting in November 2019.

The application form is available here.

Please direct any questions, as well as completed application forms, to Laura Weinrib, Chair, at proposals@aslh.net.

Membership and By-Laws Updates

The ASLH Board and Executive Committee recently made a variety of decisions regarding membership policies and our by-laws upon recommendations made by our Membership Committee. These changes are designed to increase the Society’s control over and improve members’ experience with the renewal process, increase participation in our annual elections, and ensure the Law & History Review reaches our members in a timely, cost-effective manner. We are delighted to share them with the broader ASLH community.

First, the Board and Executive Committee recently voted to begin the process of managing membership for the Society ourselves–instead of relying on Cambridge University Press–through our new website. This change, which will become effective January 1, 2020, will permit the ASLH to create web portals for members to submit conference papers and grants, as well as member profiles, which will help identify book reviewers for the Law & History Review and facilitate voter turnout in our annual elections.

Second, the Board and Executive Committee also recently voted to create electronic memberships–through which members would receive digital access to the Law and History Review instead of hard copies of the journal. These electronic memberships will be discounted by $15.

Finally, the Board and Executive Committee also recently voted to change our membership cycle. The ASLH membership cycle had run for the calendar year, which meant that individuals who generally renewed their membership late in the year, just before our annual meeting, only became members for a few months before their membership expired on December 31. Because our annual elections take place in the late summer, those who followed this schedule were ineligible to vote and received Law & History Review irregularly. To address these issues, the Board and Executive Committee voted to move the ASLH membership cycle forward, such that our membership cycle will now run from October 1 through September 30.

This new policy necessitated a change in Article I, Section 4 of the Society’s by-laws, which have previously stated:

The dues of all categories of dues-paying members shall be fixed by the directors and officers. All annual dues are payable on the first day of the calendar year. Only those members who have paid their dues are entitled to rights and privileges.

The Membership Committee recommended amending Article I, Section 4 of the Society’s by-laws as follows:

The dues of all categories of dues-paying members shall be fixed by the directors and officers. All annual dues are payable on the first day of the calendar year. Only those members who have paid their dues are entitled to rights and privileges.

A resolution to amend the Society’s by-laws as recommended was subsequently unanimously approved by the Executive Committee.

To carry current members into this new membership cycle, the Board and the Executive Committee also voted to impose a one time adjustment fee of $25 for the additional nine months of membership in 2019-2020, but only on faculty members who pay annually, not on graduate students. Life members, for obvious reasons, are excluded from this adjustment fee.

Approaching Deadline: Cromwell Research Fellowship Applications

In 2019, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation will make available a number of $5,000 fellowship awards to support research and writing in American legal history by early-career scholars. Early career generally includes those researching or writing a PhD dissertation (or equivalent project) and recent recipients of a graduate degree working on their first major monograph or research project. The number of awards made is at the discretion of the Foundation. In the past several years, the trustees of the Foundation have made between five and ten awards. Scholars who are not at the early stages of their careers may seek research grants directly from the Foundation. For more information, see the Grants page on the Cromwell Foundation’s website.

Application Process for 2019
The Committee for Research Fellowships and Awards of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the Foundation. (The Cromwell Foundation was established in 1930 to promote and encourage scholarship in legal history, particularly in the colonial and early national periods of the United States. The Foundation has supported the publication of legal records as well as historical monographs.)

To apply, please use this link.

After filling out an application form, applicants will be prompted to upload a description of their proposed project (double-spaced, maximum 6 pages including notes; please include a working title), a budget, a timeline, a short c.v. (no longer than 3 pages), and the names and contact information of two academic referees from whom the applicant has requested letters of recommendation.

Recommenders may upload their letters at this link.

Applications must be completed and recommendations received no later than midnight on July 1, 2019.

  • Your application should make clear the relevance of law to your project. The most successful applicants demonstrate how law (broadly construed) is at the center of their projects, and how their research will tell us something new about law.
  • Your proposal should engage with relevant scholarship in the field. While this discussion can be brief, the most successful applicants explain how their projects tell us something new.
  • Your application should have a clear budget that is specific about how and where you plan to spend research funds.
  • You will receive a confirmation email within a few days of submitting your application; if you do not receive such an email, please follow up.
  • Please direct any questions to the committee at smayeri@law.upenn.edu and include “Cromwell” in the subject line.

During the pendency of their application, candidates for Fellowships should keep the Committee apprised of any change of address. Successful applicants will be notified by early November. An announcement of the awards will also be made at the annual meeting of the American Society of Legal History.

Committee Members
Serena Mayeri (2016), Chair
University of Pennsylvania

Kenneth Mack (2016)
Harvard University

Thomas J. McSweeney (2018)
College of William & Mary

Yvonne Pitts (2018)
Purdue University

Tracy Steffes (2017)
Brown University

Katherine Turk (2016)
University of North Carolina

Call For Proposals: Wallace Johnson First Book Program

The Wallace Johnson Program for First Book Authors, sponsored by the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), is designed to provide advice and support to scholars working toward the publication of first books in legal history, broadly defined. In conversation with peers and with the advice of senior scholars, participants will learn about approaching and working with publishers, and will develop and revise a book proposal and one to two sample chapters.

Applications for Johnson Fellows are invited from early career, pre-tenure scholars, publishing in English, who have completed PhDs or JDs and are working on first books in legal history. The deadline for applications is June 30, 2019.

Scholars with expertise in all chronological periods and geographical fields are encouraged to apply, as are scholars who may not (yet) identify as legal historians.

The program includes the following elements:

    • Fall 2019 (Nov. 21, 2019): one-day, pre-conference workshop at the ASLH Annual Meeting (Boston, MA), introduction to book publishing and proposal writing;
    • Spring 2020 (date TBD): remote meeting, feedback from program leader and peers on draft book proposal;
    • Summer 2020 (last week of July): two-day workshop on draft chapters, University of Pennsylvania Law School; and
    • Fall 2020 (November 11-14, 2020): Wallace Johnson Fellows Roundtable at the ASLH Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL).

The 2019-20 Johnson Program will be led by Professor Reuel Schiller, with the participation of other senior legal historians. Participants must commit to participation in all elements of the program.

Up to 5 Fellows will be selected. Each will receive substantial funding for travel and accommodation related to the program, with a small supplement to participants who have no institutional support for travel and research.

The application deadline is June 30, 2019. Applicants should submit items 1-3 as a single .pdf document, Times New Roman, 12 point font, with your full name in a header on each page:

1. Applicant Information Sheet (in lieu of cover letter):

    • Personal Information: first name; last name; current mailing address; phone; email address; current institution; current position; institutional affiliation for 2020-2021;
    • Education: month and year of graduate degree, institution, and field: Ph.D.; J. D.; Other
    • Funding: We are committed to enabling fellows from a range of institutional positions to participate in the program. Your answer here will have no effect on your candidacy, but will enable us to provide small supplements to participants without institutional support. If selected for the Wallace Johnson program, would you have access to university or other institutional funds to help cover the costs of attending the program? Yes, No, Don’t Know. Comments or relevant details.

2. Project Description (single spaced; not exceeding 1,000 words) organized with the following sections and addressing these questions. We are looking for candid self-reflection. You should think of this document as the first step in the revision, rethinking process.

    • Author Bio: Tell us about yourself, including your position and commitments for the fellowship year (remember, we’ll have your cv);
    • Dissertation: What was your dissertation about? What was its argument? What was its arc? What were its original contributions?
    • Book: What changes are you imagining for the book in terms of conceptualization, structure, narrative, or arc? Are you planning additional research and/or new chapters? How are you imagining the book’s audience?

3. Abridged Curriculum Vitae (limited to 2 pages);

4. Two letters of recommendation submitted separately. Please ask two scholars who know your work well to write a letter of recommendation. We recommend that at least one letter come from a faculty member who was a major advisor of the dissertation. Letters should be sent by email directly to Barbara Welke (welke004@umn.edu) and received no later than June 30, 2019.

All materials should be submitted to Barbara Welke (welke004@umn.edu), Chair, University of Minnesota by June 30, 2019.

The 2018 Johnson Program for First Book Authors Committee:
Barbara Young Welke, Chair, University of Minnesota
Lauren Benton, Vanderbilt University
Sam Erman, USC
Kurt Graham, NARA
Tim Lovelace, Indiana University
Intisar Rabb, Harvard University
Matthew Sommer, Stanford University

Call for Nominations: Cromwell Article Prize

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Article prize is awarded annually for the best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar. Articles published in 2018 in the field of American legal history, broadly conceived, will be considered. There is a preference for articles in the colonial and early national periods. Articles in the Law and History Review are eligible for the Surrency Prize and will not be considered for the Cromwell Article Prize.

The author of the winning article receives a prize of $5,000. The Foundation awards the prize after a review of the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History.

The Cromwell Foundation makes the final award, in consultation with a subcommittee from the American Society for Legal History. This subcommittee invites nominations for the article prize. Authors are invited to nominate themselves or others may nominate works meeting the criteria that they have read and enjoyed. Please send a brief letter of nomination, no longer than a page, along with an electronic copy (or URL of the publication site) of the article, by May 31, 2019, to the subcommittee chair, Prof. David Konig, at cromwellarticleprize@gmail.com.

Photos from the 2018 Annual Meeting

In 2018, the ASLH returned for the first time since 1995 to Houston, the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States. The meeting, which was held at the Hilton-Américas from November 8, 2018 to November 11, 2018, showcased a population center expected to become the nation’s third-largest city by 2025 and advanced ASLH’s further internationalization by providing a first-class opening for the discussion of legal history scholarship concerning Mexico and Latin America generally.

The meeting was sponsored by the University of Houston Law Center and the University of Houston.

The Plenary Lecture was delivered by Ariela Gross of the University of Southern California Law School and Alejandro de la Fuente of Harvard Law School.

Call for Applications: Cromwell Research Fellowships

In 2019, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation will make available a number of $5,000 fellowship awards to support research and writing in American legal history by early-career scholars. Early career generally includes those researching or writing a PhD dissertation (or equivalent project) and recent recipients of a graduate degree working on their first major monograph or research project. The number of awards made is at the discretion of the Foundation. In the past several years, the trustees of the Foundation have made between five and ten awards. Scholars who are not at the early stages of their careers may seek research grants directly from the Foundation. For more information, see the Grants page on the Cromwell Foundation’s website.

Application Process for 2019
The Committee for Research Fellowships and Awards of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the Foundation. (The Cromwell Foundation was established in 1930 to promote and encourage scholarship in legal history, particularly in the colonial and early national periods of the United States. The Foundation has supported the publication of legal records as well as historical monographs.)

To apply, please use this link.

After filling out an application form, applicants will be prompted to upload a description of their proposed project (double-spaced, maximum 6 pages including notes; please include a working title), a budget, a timeline, a short c.v. (no longer than 3 pages), and the names and contact information of two academic referees from whom the applicant has requested letters of recommendation.

Recommenders may upload their letters at this link.

Applications must be completed and recommendations received no later than midnight on July 1, 2019.

  • Your application should make clear the relevance of law to your project. The most successful applicants demonstrate how law (broadly construed) is at the center of their projects, and how their research will tell us something new about law.
  • Your proposal should engage with relevant scholarship in the field. While this discussion can be brief, the most successful applicants explain how their projects tell us something new.
  • Your application should have a clear budget that is specific about how and where you plan to spend research funds.
  • You will receive a confirmation email within a few days of submitting your application; if you do not receive such an email, please follow up.
  • Please direct any questions to the committee at smayeri@law.upenn.edu and include “Cromwell” in the subject line.

During the pendency of their application, candidates for Fellowships should keep the Committee apprised of any change of address. Successful applicants will be notified by early November. An announcement of the awards will also be made at the annual meeting of the American Society of Legal History.

Committee Members
Serena Mayeri (2016), Chair
University of Pennsylvania

Kenneth Mack (2016)
Harvard University

Thomas J. McSweeney (2018)
College of William & Mary

Yvonne Pitts (2018)
Purdue University

Tracy Steffes (2017)
Brown University

Katherine Turk (2016)
University of North Carolina

Call for Applications: Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars

At the annual ASLH conference, two early career legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. While papers simultaneously submitted to the ASLH Program committee are eligible, Preyer Scholars must present their paper as part of the Preyer panel and will be removed from any other panel. Submissions are welcome on any topic in legal, institutional and/or constitutional history. Early career scholars, including those pursuing graduate or law degrees, those who have completed their terminal degree within the previous year, and those independent scholars at a comparable stage, are eligible to apply.

Submissions should be a single MS Word document consisting of a complete curriculum vitae, contact information, and a complete draft of the paper to be presented. Papers should not exceed 50 pages (12 point font, double-spaced) and must contain supporting documentation. In past competitions, the Committee has given preference to draft articles and essays, though the Committee will also consider shorter conference papers, as one of the criteria for selection will be the suitability of the paper for reduction to a twenty-minute oral presentation.

The deadline for submission is March 15, 2019. 

The two Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will receive a $500 cash award and reimbursement of expenses up to $750 for travel, hotels, and meals. Each will present the paper that s/he submitted to the competition at the Society’s annual meeting. The Society’s journal, Law and History Review, has published several past winners of the Preyer competition, though it is under no obligation to do so.

Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to early career legal historians, the program is designed to help legal historians at the beginning of their careers. The competition for Preyer Scholars is organized by the Society’s Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee.

Please send submissions by March 15, 2019 to Laura Kalman, Chair, Preyer Award Committee, University of California, Santa Barbara, kalman@history.ucsb.edu.  She will forward them to other committee members.

Call for Applications: Student Research Colloquium

The American Society for Legal History will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, November 20, and Thursday, November 21, 2019, immediately preceding the ASLH’s annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.  The SRC annually enables eight Ph.D. students and law students to discuss their in-progress dissertations and articles with distinguished ASLH-affiliated scholars.

The SRC’s target audience includes early-post-coursework graduate students and historically minded law students.  The colloquium seeks to introduce such students to legal history, to each other, and to the legal-historical scholarly community.  Students working in all chronological periods, including ancient and medieval history, and all geographical fields are encouraged to apply, as are students who have not yet received any formal training in legal history.  Applicants who have not yet had an opportunity to present their work to the ASLH are particularly encouraged to apply.  A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group. The group will discuss these papers at the colloquium, under the guidance of two faculty directors.

The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs. This year, one SRC participant will be awarded the Herbert Johnson Fellowship, named for a distinguished legal historian and past-president of the ASLH.

The application deadline is July 15, 2019.  Applicants should electronically submit:

  • a cover letter describing, among other things, how far along you are and how many years remain in your course of study;
  • a CV;
  • a two-page, single-spaced “research statement” that begins with a title and proceeds to describe the in-progress research project that you propose to present at the colloquium; and
  • a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from, or together with, the other materials.

Organizers will notify all applicants of their decisions by August 15, 2019.  Please direct questions and applications to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net.

Call for Papers: Australian Historical Association 2019 Conference

The Australian Historical Association invites proposals for its 2019 Conference, “Local Communities, Global Networks,” which will take place July 8-12, 2019 at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba.

In particular, the program committee is interested in proposals that address the following questions: How have the local and the global intersected, inspired and transformed experiences within and from Australia’s history? How do the histories of Indigenous, imperial, migrant and the myriad of other communities and networks inform, contest and shape knowledge about Australia today? The conference theme speaks to the centrality of History for engaging with community and family networks. Constructing livelihoods within an empire and a nation that have had a global reach, local communities have responded in diverse ways. The varieties of historical enquiry into this past enrich our understanding of Australian and world history.

They also welcome paper and panel proposals on any geographical area, time period, or field of history, on the conference theme “Local Communities, Global Networks.”

Proposals are due February, 28, 2019.

For additional information, visit their website.

Call for Applications: Law and Society Association 2019 Junior Scholars Workshop

The Law and Society Association is pleased to accept applications for the 2019 Junior Scholar Workshop. The workshop will begin mid-day on Tuesday, May 28, and continue through the day on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. The workshop immediately precedes the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association in Washington DC.

We invite applications from junior scholars in any field whose scholarly interests involve socio-legal studies. Specifically, we welcome applications from graduate students (including advanced law students), post-doctoral fellows, and assistant professors (or other pre-tenure faculty). The program will consist of panel presentations on professional development topics, breakout sessions to discuss participant’s research in small groups, and informal discussions over shared meals.

For those not reimbursed by their home institution for airfare and lodging expenses, LSA will offer up to $300 for participants from the US and up to $650 for international participants toward the costs of attending the workshop.

Although membership in LSA is not required, members will be given priority. Registration for the annual meeting is required.

For more information, see their application site.

ASLH Election Closes September 22, 2018

A reminder to all members: the ASLH election will end at 11:59 PM, September 22, 2018. ASLH members should have received an email asking them to vote (each email contained a voting token which is individualized). Please follow the email instructions and cast your ballot before the deadline.

Call for Applications: Hurst Institute, June 2019

Call for Applications
Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History: June 9-22, 2019
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Application Deadline: December 3, 2018

The American Society for Legal History and the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School are pleased to invite applications for the tenth biennial Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History. The purpose of the Hurst Institute is to advance the approach to legal scholarship fostered by J. Willard Hurst in his teaching, mentoring, and scholarship. The Hurst Institute assists scholars from law, history, and other disciplines in pursuing research on the legal history of any part of the world.

The 2019 Hurst Institute will be led by Mitra Sharafi, Professor of Law and Legal Studies (with History affiliation) at University of Wisconsin–Madison. The two‑week program features presentations by guest scholars, discussions of core readings in legal history, and analysis of the work of the participants in the Institute. The ASLH Hurst Selection Committee will select twelve Fellows to participate in this event.

Applicant Qualifications
Scholars in law, history and other disciplines pursuing research on legal history of any part of the world are eligible to apply. Preference will be given to applications from scholars at an early stage of their career (beginning faculty members, doctoral students who have completed or almost completed their dissertations, and J.D. graduates with appropriate backgrounds).

Fellowship Requirements
Fellows are expected to be in residence for the entire two‑week term of the Institute, to participate in all program activities of the Institute, and to give an informal works‑in‑progress presentation in the second week of the Institute. Fellows are expected to engage with scholars from other fields and to foster an atmosphere of collegiality.

Fellowship Terms
The Institute for Legal Studies will pay for approved travel expenses and will provide a private room for each fellow at a hotel located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Most meals will be provided.

Application Process
(1) Submit the following materials in a single pdf file starting with your last name to ils@law.wisc.edu. Multiple attachments will not be accepted.

· Curriculum Vitae with your complete contact information.

· Statement of Purpose (maximum 500 words) describing your current work, specific research interests, and the broader perspectives on legal history that inform your work.

(2) Arrange to have two letters of recommendation sent electronically as a pdf files (these must be on institutional letterhead and signed) to ils@law.wisc.edu by the deadline.

Please note that late or incomplete applications will not be accepted.

Additional Information: http://www.law.wisc.edu/ils/hurst_institute.htm

Questions: Contact ils@law.wisc.edu

Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History, October 26, 2018

Arguing for the Rule of Law: Using the Hebrew Bible and Caricatures of Foreigners in British and Spanish America
Date: Friday, October 26, 2018
Location: Newberry Library, Chicago
Organized by: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (University of Texas, Austin) and Richard Ross (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

How did settlers, imperial officials, indigenous peoples, and Africans in the New World seek to demonstrate, or disprove, that a polity respected the rule of law? (The phrase “rule of law” is modern; but the core of the idea is not). Colonial rule invited accusations of arbitrary government and systematic lawlessness. This conference will focus on two common techniques used to assess whether a polity respected the supremacy of law. First, controversialists asked whether governance accorded with God’s expectations of justice as laid out in Scripture, particularly the Hebrew Bible. Second, caricatures of other societies could be held up to make one’s own appear lawful and just, or the reverse. British American settlers applauded the civility of their law by reference to the presumed barbarism of the Irish and Amerindians. They saw liberty in their exploitive legal order by opposing it to the supposed absolutism of the Spanish and French empires. Spanish settlers justified their rule and derecho by contrasting them to the law of indigenous polities and of their New World rivals. The conference will bring together historians, law professors, and social scientists to think about the complex debates about the rule of law in the English and Iberian Atlantic.

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (University of Texas, Austin) and Richard Ross (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) organized “Arguing for the Rule of Law: Using the Hebrew Bible and Caricatures of Foreigners in British and Spanish America.” The conference is an offering of the Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History, which gathers every other year at the Newberry Library in Chicago in order to explore a particular topic in the comparative legal history of the Atlantic world in the period c.1492-1815. Funding has been provided by the University of Illinois College of Law.

Attendance at the Symposium is free and open to the public. Those who wish to attend should preregister by sending an email to Richard Ross at Rjross@illinois.edu. Papers will be circulated electronically to all registrants several weeks before the conference.

For information about the conference, please consult our website at https://law.illinois.edu/faculty-research/specialty-programs/legal-history/ or contact Richard Ross at Rjross@illinois.edu or at 217-244-7890.

ASLH Elections Underway Now

ASLH Elections are underway now through September 22. If you are a member of the society, you should receive today or tomorrow (August 21 or 22) a ballot for the election from VoteNow, the organization that conducts our elections. If you have not received it, please check your spam folder first. If your ballot is not present, you may not have been a member as of the July 10 membership list that was furnished to us by Cambridge University Press–meaning, your membership has lapsed. Fear not! Contact CUP and renew your membership, then send Sally Hadden (sally.hadden@wmich.edu) a copy of your membership renewal email from CUP. She can add you to the election and get you a ballot all the way until September 21. Remember, voting closes on September 22 at midnight.

Membership Renewal and Voting in the ASLH Election

On behalf of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), we invite all legal historians, practitioners, graduate and law students, and interested parties to join the ASLH or renew their memberships.

The American Society for Legal History is a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to fostering scholarship, teaching, and study concerning the law and institutions of all legal systems, both Anglo-American and those that do not operate in the Anglo-American tradition. Founded in 1956, the Society sponsors the Law and History Review and Studies in Legal History.

Membership in the ASLH offers numerous benefits for scholars of legal history. The Society holds annual conferences to foster intellectual development in legal history worldwide. While the organization is based primarily in the United States, its membership and its scope are international.

With membership comes:
-fellowship and intellectual stimulation of your peers
-networking opportunities with scholars across legal history
-subscription to Law and History Review
-reduced rates for the ASLH 2018 Annual Meeting in Houston,
held November 8-11

Join or renew by July 31 to insure that you may vote in the upcoming ASLH election. Join today at www.cambridge.org/ASLH

Please contact Dr. Patricia Minter, Membership Committee Chair, for further information (Patricia.minter@wku.edu)

Projects and Proposals invites submissions

The Projects and Proposals Committee of the American Society for Legal History exists to encourage new initiatives in the study, presentation, and production of legal historical scholarship and in the communication of legal history to all its possible publics and audiences. We would consider subventions of scholarly publications or of museum exhibits or pedagogical experiments or of any number of other collective pursuits. We do not support individual research projects. Most of the projects we have supported have been in the 4000 to 6000 dollar range.

We issue a yearly call for proposals. That call will be sent to all members of the American Society for Legal History later in July 2018. Our deadline for receiving applications will be September 17, 2018. The committee will then review the proposals, with the goal of recommending a list to the Board of Directors of the Society in preparation for their meeting in November 2018. For more information, consult the Projects and Proposals webpage.

Extended deadline for Cromwell Dissertation Prize

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation has generously funded a dissertation prize of $5,000. The winning dissertation may focus on any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies; topics dealing with the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference. Anyone who received a Ph.D. in 2017 will be eligible for this year’s prize. The Foundation awards the prize after a review of the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History.

To be considered for this year’s prize, please send one hard-copy of the dissertation and the curriculum vitae of its author to John D. Gordan, III, Chair of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee, and each member of the Cromwell Dissertation Prize Advisory Subcommittee with a postmark no later than June 29, 2018.

Conference on Legal History of the European Union, June 21-22, 2018

The annual conference of the research field “Legal History of the European Union” will take place at the Frankfurt Max Planck Institute for European Legal History on June 21-22, 2018. The particular focus of this year’s meeting will be “Key Biographies in the Legal History of European Union, 1950-1993.”

The conference programme (including an outline of the conference aims and objectives), as well as a registration form can be found here. There is no conference fee. We would be delighted to welcome you at the Institute for this event.

Johnson Program for First Book Authors

Johnson Program for First Book Authors
Sponsored by the American Society for Legal History
Deadline for Applications: June 30, 2018

The American Society for Legal History (ASLH) announces a new program designed to provide advice and support to scholars working toward the publication of first books in legal history, broadly defined. In conversation with peers and with the advice of senior scholars, participants will develop and revise book proposals and sample chapters, and they will meet with guest editors to learn about approaching and working with publishers.
Applications for Johnson Fellows are invited from early career, pre-tenure scholars, publishing in English, who have completed PhDs or JDs and are working on first books in legal history. Scholars with expertise in all chronological periods and geographical fields are encouraged to apply, as are students who may not (yet) identify as legal historians.
The Johnson Program will begin in November, 2018 at the ASLH Annual Meeting in Houston and will include two in-person workshops and one remote consultation on work-in-progress:
November 8, 2018: One-day workshop at the ASLH Annual Meeting (Houston, TX), introduction to book publishing and prospectus writing;
Spring 2019 (date TBD): Remote meeting, peer and senior scholar feedback on draft prospectus; and
Summer 2019 (July 26-27): Two-day workshop on draft chapters, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
The 2018-19 Johnson Program will be led by Professor Reuel Schiller, with the participation of other senior legal historians. Participants must commit to participation in all three meetings.
The program will include up to 5 Fellows and will provide substantial funding for travel and accommodation.

The application deadline is June 30, 2018. Applicants should submit (as a single document Times New Roman, 12 point font):
cover letter (single spaced, not exceeding two pages) describing the applicant’s professional trajectory to date and reasons for interest in the Johnson Program;
curriculum vitae (including contact information);
project abstract (single spaced; up to 100 words)
project description (single spaced; not exceeding 750 words) organized with the following sections and headings: Introduction, Significance, Design and Methodology, Chapter Outline, Plans for Revision and Progress to Date.
two letters of recommendation from faculty members, at least one of whom should have been a major advisor of the project (sent separately from the other materials).

All materials should be submitted to Barbara Welke (welke004@umn.edu), Chair, University of Minnesota by June 30, 2018.
The 2018 Johnson Program for First Book Authors Committee
Barbara Young Welke, Chair, University of Minnesota, welke004@umn.edu
Lauren Benton, Vanderbilt University, lauren.benton@vanderbilt.edu
Sam Erman, USC Gould School of Law, serman@law.usc.edu
Kurt Graham, NARA, kurt.graham@nara.gov
Reuel Schiller, UC Hastings College of Law, schiller@uchastings.edu
Rayman Solomon, University of Rutgers-Camden School of Law, raysol@camlaw.rutgers.edu
Matthew Sommer, Stanford University, msommer@stanford.edu

Applicants will be notified by July 30, 2018. Please direct any questions to Barbara Welke.

Revisions to Society By-Laws

At a meeting held on Sunday March 25, 2018, the Board of Directors voted to make changes in the Society by-laws. The main changes adopted alter the length of committee service for Hurst Institute and Finance committee members (Article II, sections 7a and 9) and list the monograph series Studies in Legal History as an official mode of Society publication (Article V, section 2). A copy of the changes adopted are posted here to give notice formally to the membership about this vote. By-laws, proposed amendments for 2018, show All Markup

Post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University

Northwestern University’s Center for Legal Studies invites applications from outstanding candidates for a full-time, two-year, non-renewable teaching and research post-doctoral fellowship beginning fall 2018. The purpose of the fellowship is to recognize and support original interdisciplinary research and teaching in the study of law and inequality in race, crime, policing, mass incarceration, civil rights, and related subject areas.

Eligible candidates will hold a PhD in sociology, political science, history, psychology, economics or related disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields by the start of the appointment (August 15, 2018) and have a record of excellence in teaching and research in law and racial inequality.

The fellowship will be held in residence in Northwestern University’s Center for Legal Studies for two academic years (2018-19 & 2019-20). Fellows will teach two (2) undergraduate courses per year of the fellowship (4 total) and participate in the intellectual life of the Center including attending speaker events, workshops and reading groups in interdisciplinary legal studies.

Application info here: http://www.legalstudies.northwestern.edu/people/LIPostDoc2018.html

Call For Papers: Legal and Institutional Translation Policies

Leuven University (Belgium) is organizing a conference on the use of translation in public legal and administrative institutions, in the past and present. They would like to attract researchers from a variety of fields, including legal history, and are encouraging legal historians to consider applying to participate. The deadline for abstracts is February 1 2018. Registration to attend is currently open. More details may be found here: https://kuleuvencongres.be/litp2018

From the conference website: “Firstly, [the conference organizers wish] to document the state of affairs of the expanding and interdisciplinary field of legal and institutional translation, by approaching the latter through the lens of ‘translation policy’. This umbrella concept, as derived from Spolsky’s view on language policy (Gonzalez Nuñez 2016), embraces many features of translational communication: rules, agency, practices and values. In addition, it enables framing of translation across the separate disciplines’ realm, and so becomes a binding factor between the study of forms and techniques, multilingual and transnational translation forms, issues of governance and linguistic justice. Taking stock of translation policy as applied to legal and institutional translation needs accounting for historical (Wolf 2015; Schreiber & D’hulst 2017) as well as contemporary ones, theoretical as well as applied approaches (Gonzalez Nuñez & Meylaerts 2017). Historical insight gained by case studies should offer a basis for comparison, and advance the understanding of the embedding contexts and societal impact of translation policies past and present (Lannoy & Van Gucht 2006). It further needs the investigation of policies construed not only in Europe and the Americas but also in the much less studied areas of Asia and Africa, and the generally overlooked eras before the 20th century (Beukes 2007; Baxter 2013).

Secondly, this conference aims at the development of interdisciplinary policies engaging translation studies, legal and institutional studies, and political philosophy. Present-day challenges such as the exponential spread of multilingualism going hand in hand with plural or hybrid forms of citizenship, or the political and societal integration of allophone minorities and immigrants in particular indeed raise new questions. How should one ensure better linguistic integration of minorities in national public spaces and beyond, safeguard equal access to institutions as well as to public and private goods and services, create an inclusive society with due respect for diversity?”

Call for Participants: 2018 Student Research Colloquium

The American Society for Legal History will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, Nov. 7, and Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, immediately preceding the ASLH’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas. The SRC annually enables eight Ph.D. students and law students to discuss their in-progress dissertations and articles with distinguished ASLH-affiliated scholars. This year, the Department of History at Rice University will host the event.

The SRC’s target audience includes early-post-coursework graduate students and historically minded law students. The colloquium seeks to introduce such students to legal history, to each other, and to the legal-historical scholarly community. Students working in all chronological periods, including ancient and medieval history, and all geographical fields, including non-U.S. history, are encouraged to apply, as are students who have not yet received any formal training in legal history. Applicants who have not had an opportunity to present their work to the ASLH are particularly encouraged to apply. A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group. The group will discuss these papers at the colloquium, under the guidance of faculty directors. The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs.

The application deadline is July 15, 2018. Applicants should submit:
• a cover letter describing, among other things, how far along you are and how many years remain in your course of study;
• a CV;
• a two-page, single-spaced “research statement” that begins with a title and proceeds to describe the in-progress research project that you propose to present at the colloquium; and
• a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from, or together with, the other materials.

Organizers will notify all applicants of their decisions by August 15, 2018. Please direct questions and applications to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net.

Call for Submissions: Peter Gonville Stein book prize

The American Society for Legal History announces the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, to be presented annually for the best book in legal history written in English. This award is designed to recognize and encourage the further growth of fine work in legal history that focuses on all non-US regions, as well as global and international history. To be eligible, a book must sit outside of the field of US legal history and be published during the previous calendar year. Announced at the annual meeting of the ASLH, this honor includes a citation on the contributions of the work to the broader field of legal history. A book may only be considered for the Stein Award, the Reid Award, or the Cromwell Book Prize. It may not be nominated for more than one of these three prizes.

The Stein Award is named in memory of Peter Gonville Stein, BA, LLB (Cantab); PhD (Aberdeen); QC; FBA; Honorary Fellow, ASLH, and eminent scholar of Roman law at the University of Cambridge, and made possible by a generous contribution from an anonymous donor.

For the 2018 prize, the Stein Award Committee will accept nominations of any book (not including textbooks, critical editions, and collections of essays) that bears a copyright date of 2017 as it appears on the printed version of the book. Translations into English may be nominated, provided they are published within two years of the publication date of the original version.

Nominations for the Stein Award (including self-nominations) should be submitted by March 15, 2018. Please send an e-mail to the Committee at steinaward@aslh.net and include: (1) a curriculum vitae of the author (including the author’s e-mail address); and (2) the name, mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of the contact person at the press who will provide the committee with two copies of the book. This person will be contacted shortly after the deadline. (If a title is short-listed, six further copies will be requested from the publisher.)

Please contact the committee chair, Mitra Sharafi, with any questions: mitra.sharafi@wisc.edu

Call For Papers: ESCLH Conference, June 28-20, 2018

Laws Across Codes and Laws Decoded

28 June – 30 June 2018 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris)

The Organising Committee of the 5th Biennal Conference and the Executive Council of the European Society for Comparative Legal History are pleased to call for papers for the upcoming conference to be held. The main theme picks up threads of thought from the earlier ESCLH conferences in Valencia (2010), Amsterdam (2012), Macerata (2014) and Gdansk (2016) to explore what codes and codification have meant and continue to mean for legal systems with codes, and for those without. Papers should be submitted, as set out below, by 15 November 2017.

The conference will focus on the issue of codes or alternatives to codes as instruments of transforming laws in Europe and in the world. While codes, and the process of codification, are at least familiar if not always completely understood, this conference challenges us to look deeper at what a code meant for the legal systems affected by it. The conference seeks to understand the whole process of codification, from political aspects to its conception, agreement and roll-out, through to technical matters of drafting and implementation and even to linguistic matters of expression and deeper meanings. Challenging the importance for legal rules to be inserted within or outside a code, the conference proposes to examine all sorts of codes, and not only the most known civil codes: general codes as special (such as penal, commercial, labour, family, military) codes, officious codes as official codes. The conference seeks also to study the effects the codified structure of the norms could have on their content and on the way law functions, notably through case law and law writing. All the historical situations in which law reform took place outside of codification and outside of codes can be questioned could be relevant in helping us to understand law reform through codes or its alternatives.

Papers should be novel, properly researched and referenced. They should address the conference theme, exploring doctrinal, theoretical, cultural or methodological aspects of comparative legal history. They must also be comparative, addressing more than one system of laws. The organisers particularly welcome addressing multiple legal systems or cultures. This includes where a similar legal system functions in different cultural circles.

Practical details:

1. To offer a paper, please send the title of their paper, a short abstract (of 200-400 word, absolutely no more and a short CV (no more than 1 page) by 15 November 2017 to the organizing committee, c/o jean-louis.halperin@ens.fr.

2. The presentations should be in English.

3. It is also possible to submit a complete proposal for one or more panels (3 papers normally).

4. The list of accepted papers will be announced by 8 December 2017.

Shortly, a conference website will be launched with fuller details of the conference. For the moment, some transport and accommodation information follows.

Paris offers many accommodation possibilities ranging from five-star hotels, through smaller hotels in the Quartier latin and private rooms to beds in youth and student hostels. For some postgraduates the Ecole Normale Supérieure

could offer cheaper accommodation in student dormitories.

Call For Papers: “Many 14th Amendments” Conference

The University of Miami will be hosting a wide-ranging symposium entitled “The Many Fourteenth Amendments” to mark the sesquicentennial. The symposium will be held on March 1-3, 2018 in Miami (Coral Gables more specifically). The announcement with more details may be found here. Paper proposals are currently being solicited and the deadline is September 15.

Student Research Colloquium announced

The American Society for Legal History will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, October 25, and Thursday, October 26, 2017, immediately preceding the ASLH’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The SRC enables a small number of Ph.D. students and law students to discuss their in-progress dissertations and law review articles with distinguished ASLH-affiliated scholars.

The SRC’s target audience includes early-post-coursework graduate students and historically minded law students. The colloquium seeks to introduce such students to legal history, to each other, to the ASLH, and to the legal-historical scholarly community generally. Students working in all chronological and geographical fields are encouraged to apply, as are students whose projects engage legal-historical themes but who have not yet received any formal training in legal history. Applicants who have not had an opportunity to present their work at ASLH annual meetings or who have not otherwise had an opportunity to discuss their work with legal historians are particularly encouraged to apply. A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group. The group will discuss these papers at the colloquium, under the guidance of two faculty directors. The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs.

The application deadline is July 15, 2017. Applicants should submit:

* a cover letter;
* a CV;
* a two-page, single-spaced “research statement,” describing an in-progress project; and
* a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from, or together with, the other materials.

Organizers will notify all applicants of their decisions by August 15, 2017. Please direct questions and applications to John Wertheimer at <email>.

Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars: Call for Papers, 2017

Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to young legal historians, the program of Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars is designed to help legal historians at the beginning of their careers. At the annual meeting of the Society two early career legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. The generosity of Professor Preyer’s friends and family has enabled the Society to offer a small honorarium to the Preyer Scholars and to reimburse, in some measure or entirely, their costs of attending the meeting. The competition for Preyer Scholars is organized by the Society’s Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee.

Submissions are welcome on any topic in legal, institutional and/or constitutional history. Early career scholars, including those pursuing graduate or law degrees, those who have completed their terminal degree within the previous year, and those independent scholars at a comparable stage, are eligible to apply. Papers already submitted to the ASLH Program Committee–whether or not accepted for an existing panel–and papers never previously submitted are equally eligible. Once selected, Preyer Award winners must present their paper as part of the Preyer panel, and they will be removed from any other panel.

Submissions should be a single MS Word document consisting of a complete curriculum vitae, contact information, and a complete draft of the paper to be presented. Papers must not exceed 40 pages (12 point font, double-spaced) and must contain supporting documentation. In past competitions, the Committee has given preference to draft articles and essays, though the Committee will still consider shorter conference papers, as one of the criteria for selection will be the suitability of the paper for reduction to a twenty-minute oral presentation. The deadline for submission is June 15, 2017.

Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will receive a $500 cash award and reimbursement of expenses up to $750 for travel, hotels, and meals. Each will present the paper that s/he submitted to the competition at the Society’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, NV in October 2017. The Society’s journal, Law and History Review, has published several past winners of the Preyer competition, though it is under no obligation to do so.

Please send submissions as Microsoft Word attachments by June 15, 2017 to the chair of the Preyer Committee, H. Timothy Lovelace <email>. He will forward them to the other committee members.

The 2017 Preyer Memorial Committee
H. Timothy Lovelace, (2014) Chair, Indiana University
Melissa Hayes (2014), Independent Scholar
Michael Hoeflich (2014), University of Kansas

Rabia Belt (2016), Stanford University

Jed Shugerman (2016), Fordham University

More information, including a list of past Preyer Scholars, can be found here: https://aslh.net/about-aslh/honors-awards-and-fellowships/preyer-scholars/

Shortlist for the Langum Prize in American Legal History and Biography Announced

The shortlisted books are:

Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, by Edward B. Foley (Oxford University Press).

Discrediting the Red Scare: The Cold War Trials of James Kutcher, “The Legless Veteran,” by Robert Justin Goldstein (University Press of Kansas).

The Great Yazoo Lands Sale: The Case of Fletcher v. Peck, by Charles F. Hobson (University Press of Kansas).

Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s, by Risa Goluboff (Oxford University Press).

The final decision will be announced on the Langum Charitable Trust’s website, www.langumtrust.org, in about one month.

Fellowship Opportunity, Stanford Center for Law and History

This fellowship is intended for people who have completed (or will soon complete) their training in law and history and who seek to pursue an academic career at the intersection of the two fields.
The Stanford Center for Law and History fellowship is a residential fellowship that provides an opportunity to conduct research in the dynamic environment of Stanford University. We prefer two-year fellowships to help the fellow complete a significant body of independent scholarship, but we are willing to consider one-year terms. We expect that fellows will dedicate most of their time to pursuing their proposed research projects but will also devote some time to organizing and implementing other Center activities, including an ongoing workshop series and an annual conference. Fellows are encouraged to become part of a lively law-school-wide community of individuals with an interest in academia by attending weekly faculty lunch seminars and by participating in activities with the other fellows at Stanford Law School to learn more about one another’s scholarship and about academic life more generally. In addition, fellows are encouraged to attend and participate in the broad range of lectures and workshops available within the broader university, including inter alia, the History Department and the Stanford Humanities Center.
For the 2017-2018 fellowship, we will provide a workspace, a competitive salary, and a generous benefits package. Applicants who have completed (or are soon to complete) both a J.D. and a Ph.D in history are strongly preferred.

The Application Process:
All applicants should apply through the Stanford Careers website, Job Number 73767: https://stanfordcareers.stanford.edu/job-search?jobId=73767, and should include the following: (1) a CV; (2) a sample of academic writing; (3) a research proposal of no more than five double-space pages (briefly outlining past work but focused primarily on research to be undertaken during the fellowship); and (4) official transcripts of all academic work pursued in college, as well as in graduate programs. In addition, (5) applicants should provide two letters of recommendation, to be emailed directly by the recommenders themselves to Molly Pahkamaa at mpahkama@law.stanford.edu. All applications should be submitted no later than Tuesday, February 28, 2017.

The Stanford Center for Law and History, directed by Professor Amalia Kessler, brings together faculty and students from across Stanford University’s many schools and departments (and beyond) to participate in a broad range of conferences, workshops, and lectures devoted to examining the multifaceted interrelationships between law and history (without geographic, temporal, or other subject-area limitations).

ASLH Announces New Book Prize: Peter Gonville Stein Book Award

The American Society for Legal History announces the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, to be presented annually for the best book in legal history written in English. This award is designed to recognize and encourage the further growth of fine work in legal history that focuses on all non-US regions, as well as global and international history. To be eligible, a book must sit outside of the field of US legal history and be published during the previous two calendar years. Announced at the annual meeting of the ASLH, this honor includes a citation on the contributions of the work to the broader field of legal history. A book may only be considered for the Stein Award, the Reid Award, or the Cromwell Book Prize. It may not be nominated for more than one of these three prizes.

For the 2017 prize, the Stein Award Committee will accept nominations of any book that bears a copyright date of 2015 or 2016 as it appears on the printed version of the book.

Nominations for the Stein Award should be submitted by March 15, 2017. Please send an e-mail to steinaward@aslh.net and include: (1) a curriculum vitae of the author; and (2) the name, mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of the contact person at the press who will provide the committee with two copies of the book. This person will be contacted shortly after the deadline. (If a title is short-listed, six further copies will be requested from the publisher.)
Please contact the committee chair, Mitra Sharafi, with any questions: mitra.sharafi@wisc.edu

ASLH Election Results Announced

At the Saturday luncheon of the 2016 annual meeting in Toronto, President Rebecca Scott announced the results of the elections for the Board of Directors and Nominating Committee. The following members stand elected to the Board, where they will serve three-year terms:

Alexandra Havrylyshyn (graduate student representative), University of California, Berkeley
Angela Fernandez, University of Toronto
Catharine MacMillan, King’s College London
Kunal Parker, University of Miami
Christopher Schmidt, Chicago-Kent College of Law/American Bar Foundation

The new members of the Nominating Committee, who will also serve three-year terms, are
Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin
Karen Tani, University of California, Berkeley

Katheryn T. Preyer Scholars competition open

Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will receive a $500 cash award and reimbursement of expenses up to $750 for travel, hotels, and meals. Each will present the paper that s/he submitted to the competition at the Society’s annual meeting. More details about the competition and how to submit materials for consideration may be found here: . The deadline for this year’s competition is July 8, 2016.

2015 Conference Summary

The ASLH returned to Washington, DC for its 2015 annual meeting, Thursday, October 29, 2015 to Sunday, Nov 1, 2015. The meeting hotel was the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill. The program for the meeting was created by the Program Committee, led by co-chairs, Martha Jones (University of Michigan) and Charlotte Walker-Said (CUNY-John Jay College), with the able assistance of committee members Bethany Berger (University of Connecticut), Omar Cheta (Bard College), Malick Ghachem (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), D. Wendy Greene (Samford University), Bruce Hall (Duke University), H. Timothy Lovelace (Indiana University), Beatriz Mamigonian (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina), Sara McDougall (CUNY-John Jay College), Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon), Kristin A. Olbertson (Alma College), Will Smiley (Princeton University), and Nurfadzilah Yahaya (Washington University in St. Louis).

Local arrangements in Washington were in the hardworking hands of Renee Lerner, Chair (George Washington University Law School), Holly Brewer (University of Maryland), Robert Cottrol (George Washington University Law School), Daniel Ernst (Georgetown University Law Center), Anne Fleming (Georgetown University Law Center), Lewis Grossman (American University/Washington College of Law), Daniel Holt (Federal Judicial Center), James Oldham (Georgetown University Law Center), and Scott Pagel (George Washington University Law School).

Prior to the start of the regular conference, the Graduate Student Outreach Committee ran its second annual pre-conference research colloquium for eight graduate students from Princeton, Harvard Law School, University of Toronto, University of Michigan, UC-Davis, University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, and UC-Berkeley. Risa Goluboff (U. of Virginia) and Matthew Mirow (Florida International) served as faculty directors. By all reports, this pre-conference was a rousing success and the GSOC is planning to repeat this prior to the 2016 annual meeting.

2015 Kalman Keynote address

Laura Kalman

The conference featured 40 sessions and a plenary address by Honorary Fellow and ASLH Past President Linda Kalman on “The Long Reach of the 1960s: Confirmation Struggles and the Making of the Modern Supreme Court.” Topics of the sessions ranged from the national security state and corporate social responsibility about human rights to pluralism in ancient Athens and Ibero-American legal cultures in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Two roundtables honored the life-work of legal historians Chris Waldrep and Chuck McCurdy; four sessions styled as author-meets-reader invited reflections on violence in Roman Egypt (Ari Bryen), doubt in Islamic law (Intisar Rabb), identity in colonial South Asia (Mitra Sharafi) and the value of legal choice (Cass Sunstein). The opening reception at Georgetown Law Center was a grand affair, but an undoubted highlight for many conference goers was the closing reception on Saturday evening at the United States Supreme Court. Visiting the Supreme Court building sparked a flurry of selfie portraits taken at the opening to the justices’ chamber (in between nibbling food and enjoying conversation with other legal historians).

The annual luncheon on Saturday likewise allowed conference attendees a chance to refuel and reconnect with friends, in between announcements of awards, new developments, and the passing of the society baton from one set of leaders to another. 2015 annual luncheon

2015 annual luncheon 2

At the annual luncheon on Saturday, the ASLH added three Honorary Fellows to its ranks: Dirk Hartog, Diane Kirkby, and John McLaren

2015 Honorary Fellow Hartog

Honorary Fellow Dirk Hartog

2015 Honorary Fellow Kirkby

Honorary Fellow Diane Kirkby (left) receiving congratulations from Past President Constance Backhouse

2015 Honorary Fellow McLaren

Honorary Fellow John McLaren

2015 Klerman presents Sutherland

Tomás Gómez-Arostegui is congratulated by Dan Klerman

2015 Ledford presents Surrency

Ken Ledford presents the Surrency prize

Also at the luncheon, committee chairs presented a number of awards to deserving members in honor of their scholarship. The Sutherland Prize, chaired by Dan Klerman, was awarded to H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui for his article, “Copyright at Common Law in 1774,” 47 Connecticut Law Review (2014): 1-57.

The Surrency Prize was awarded to Fahad Ahmad Bishara for his article, “Paper Routes: Inscribing Islamic Law across the Nineteenth-Century Western Indian Ocean,” which appeared in Law and History Review 32 (Number 4, 2014): 797-820. Surrency committee chair Ken Ledford read the citation for the prize; Bishara was not present to receive his award.

2015 Ross presents Reid Prize

Richard Ross presents the Reid prize

The John Phillip Reid award went to Max M. Edling’s A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867 (University of Chicago Press, 2014). Richard Ross, committee chair for the Reid prize, read the citation; Edling could not be present to receive his award.

2015 Gordan presents Cromwells

John Gordan III

2015 Ablavsky wins Cromwell article

Greg Ablavsky, winner of the Cromwell article prize

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation supports the field of legal history in numerous ways. It honors the scholarship of deserving articles, books, and dissertations with individual awards. Cromwell Foundation secretary John Gordan III announced these winners and presented the recipients with their certificates.

The Cromwell Dissertation Prize went to Sarah Levine-Gronningsater’s “Delivering Freedom: Gradual Emancipation, Black Legal Culture, and the Origins of Sectional Crisis in New York, 1759-1870”, completed at the University of Chicago. She was unable to attend the meeting.

The Cromwell Article Prize went to Gregory Ablavsky for his essay “The Savage Constitution,” Duke Law Journal, Vol. 63, No. 5 (Feb. 2014): 999-1089.

The Cromwell Book Prize was awarded to John W. Compton for his book The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution (Harvard University Press). Professor Compton could not attend the meeting.

2015 Dayton presents Cromwell awards

Cornelia Dayton announces Cromwell awards

In addition to prizes for scholarship completed, the Cromwell Foundation sustains new research by underwriting the scholarly work of younger legal historians completing their first substantive research project (be it dissertation or book). Chair of the ASLH Research Fellowships committee, Cornelia Dayton, described the process of selection and announced the winners.

The Cromwell Foundation’s secretary, John Gordan III, presented certificates and checks to the following individuals:

Brooke Depenbusch (University of Minnesota)

Brooke Depenbusch (University of Minnesota)

Smita Ghosh

Smita Ghosh (University of Pennsylvania)

 

Jeffrey Thomas Perry (Purdue University)

Jeffrey Thomas Perry (Purdue University)

Amanda Hughett (Duke University)

Amanda Hughett (Duke University)

 

Evan Taparata (University of Minnesota)

Evan Taparata (University of Minnesota)

Lee Wilson (Clemson University)

Lee Wilson (Clemson University)

 

Cromwell fellowship winners Alexandra Havrylyshyn (University of California, Berkeley), Mary Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania), and Kathryn Schumaker (University of Oklahoma) could not attend the meeting.

The Cromwell Foundation also presented research grants to Christopher Beauchamp, Deborah Dinner, and Cynthia Nicoletti. Grants also went to Gautham Rao, Michael Schoeppner and Jeff Forret, who could not attend. John Gordan also announced that the Cromwell Foundation intends to begin funding senior scholars in the coming year–details will be announced on the Foundation’s website.

Christopher Beauchamp

Christopher Beauchamp

Deborah Dinner, with John Gordan III

Deborah Dinner, with John Gordan III

Cynthia Nicoletti, with John Gordan III

Cynthia Nicoletti, with John Gordan III

2015 Ermin presents Preyer to Boaz

Preyer Scholar Danielle Boaz with Sam Erman

The Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial panel showcases the finest scholarship by new presenters at the ASLH. The two panelists, Danielle Boaz and Maeve Glass, who appeared on the Preyer panel were recognized for their achievement by Preyer committee member  Sam Erman (University of Southern California):

Erman congratulates Preyer Scholar Maeve Glass

Sam Erman congratulates Preyer Scholar Maeve Glass

 

 

 

The annual luncheon is also a time of transitions. Departing members of the Board of Directors were thanked for their service to the ASLH (Margot Canaday, Reuel Schiller, Mitra Sharafi, David Tanenhaus, Karen Tani), and newly elected Directors were recognized (Malick W. Ghachem, Philip Girard, Sophia Lee, Sara McDougall, Gautham Rao). New members of the Nominating Committee Amalia Kessler and James Q. Whitman replaced outgoing Michael Willrich and Ariela Gross. The new president-elect of the society will be Sarah Barringer Gordon. Mike Grossberg announced that the permanent committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise fund now had a new chair: ASLH Past President Maeva Marcus. The Committee was established by Congress in 1955 to administer the fund bequeathed to the Treasury by Justice Holmes. The fund is to be used for the preparation of a history of the Supreme Court by distinguished scholars and financing annual Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures.

Past President Maeva Marcus named Holmes Devise chair

Past President Maeva Marcus named Holmes Devise chair

 

The society also recognized the exceptional service of outgoing president Michael Grossberg, who concluded the luncheon by handing the society gavel to incoming president Rebecca Scott.

2015 President Mike Grossberg

2015 President Mike Grossberg (explaining that TSA won’t allow the society gavel in carry-on luggage)

2015 New President Scott

2015 New President Rebecca Scott gets the dangerous gavel

2014 Conference Summary

Denver, November 6-9, 2014

Denver-300x162

The Society held its annual meeting in the majestic Rocky Mountain state for the first time. The program for the meeting is available here:<2014 ASLH Program LR>. As one member put it: “We move from sea-level Miami to the Mile High City.” The conference hotel was the Four Seasons Denver.  The hotel is located in the city’s Theatre District and features clear views of Rockies.

Tom Romero of the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver ably chaired the Local Arrangements Committee which had a panoply of activities arranged for all members. For example, the Thursday night opening reception took place in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals at the Bryon White U.S. Courthouse, and the Saturday evening reception was held at the Colorado Supreme Court Building (the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center). But prior to the official start of the conference, on Wednesday, Matthew Mirow (FIU) and Margot Canaday (Princeton) guided the inaugural ASLH Student Research Colloquium (SRC), a pre-conference devoted to discussion of the early stage research projects of eight graduate students. An initiative inspired by the Society’s Graduate Student Outreach Committee (led by John Wertheimer), this gathering created a vivacious start to the meeting as well as providing graduate students with a sense of their important part in the conference. This momentum carried forward into their second day of the SRC, as well as the Workshop on Medieval Legal History, which provided detailed feedback to three graduate or law students whose work was entering its final phases. The SRC and Workshop were such obvious successes that the Society intends to repeat both at the 2015 meeting, although the content area of the Workshop will switch to another field of legal scholarship.

Thirty-eight panels presented a variety of new work, ranging from the “Law at the Border” and “Regulating Sin” to “Law and Psychiatry in Modern America” and “Satire in Medieval Law.” Attendance at the meeting was strong, with attendees from more than 40 countries and an overall attendance more than 350.

There were multiple highlights to the conference. The welcoming comments to the plenary session, delivered by Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Nancy E. Rice, were illuminating and inspirational. She shared with conference attendees the history of the Carr Judicial Center, and how the building incorporated a learning center devoted to legal history, as well as artwork that focused upon state legal history, too. Carr’s opposition to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, an unpopular stance in the 1940s, was one reason his name graced the building. Following Rice’s welcome, attendees listened to Philip Girard (Osgoode Hall Law School and honorary fellow of the Society) deliver the plenary lecture, “Disorienting: Towards a Legal History of North America,” which highlighted some of the similarities but many of the differences between Canadian and U.S. legal history. His discussion used the metaphor offered by Richard Ford’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, Canada, which examined the lives of two fraternal twins, separated in adolescence and whose lives unfolded in America and Canada, with contrasting experiences of liberty.

The Saturday luncheon provided more highlights, as the Society recognized the achievements of its members, and honored those whose scholarship has advanced the field significantly. Following remarks from President Michael Grossberg, committee chairs advanced to the rostrum to name the winners of the Society’s prizes, starting with the John Phillips Reid book award, which was given to Michele Dauber for her book The Sympathetic State.

Prizes for the best book, article, and dissertation in legal history, funded by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, were introduced by Foundation trustee and Society member John Gordan III. The book prize was awarded to Yvonne Pitts for her book Family, Law, and Inheritance in America: A Social and Legal History of Nineteenth-Century Kentucky (Cambridge University Press). The article prize went to Nicholas Parrillo for his article “Leviathan and Interpretive Revolution: The Administrative State, the Judiciary, and the Rise of Legislative History, 1890-1950,” 123 Yale Law Journal (2013): 266-411. The dissertation prize went to Elisa Martia Alvarez Minoff for “Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America” (Harvard University). Fellowships to early career legal historians, also funded by the Cromwell Foundation, were likewise distributed to John M. Collins, Scott De Orio, Helen Dewar, Nancy O. Gallman, Jane C. Manners, Emily Margolis, and Samanthis Q. Smalls.

The Surrency award for the best article published in the Law and History Review was given to David Fraser and Frank Caestecker for their article “Jews or Germans? Nationality Legislation and the Restoration of Liberal Democracy in Western Europe after the Holocaust,” which appeared in Law and History Review 31 (2013): 391-422.

The Sutherland award for the best article published in English legal history was given to Garthine Walker, whose article “Rape, Acquittal and Culpability in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670–C.1750, ” appeared in Past and Present 220 (2013), 115-42.

The Craig Joyce Medal for outstanding service to the Society was presented to Tom Green (past president of the Society, a 25-year editor of the Studies in Legal History series, and member of too many committees to list).

The conclusion of the luncheon came with the recognition of the Society’s newest Honorary Fellows, whose accomplishments in their respective scholarly fields left the audience speechless as each was chronicled by Ariela Gross, Laura Kalman, or Bruce Mann (members of the Honors committee). Mary Frances Berry, António Hespanha, and Charles Donahue each addressed the room as they accepted their awards. Collectively, the three have published more than 25 books and 250 articles, in addition to editing more than 25 volumes, and their impact on their respective areas within legal history cannot be denied. But none of them are resting on their laurels. Hespanha’s comments probably spoke for all three, when he humbly stated that he hoped his future scholarship justified receiving such an honor from the society.