Cromwell Article Prize

Criteria

Best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar.

Amount

$5,000

Deadline

June 1, 2024

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Article Prize is awarded annually to the best article in American legal history published in the preceding calendar year by an early career scholar. Articles published 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 published 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 June 1, 2023, to the subcommittee chair at cromwellarticleprize@aslh.net.

Committee Members

  • Mary X. Mitchell, Chair
    University of Toronto

  • Daniel Farbman
    Boston College

  • Giuliana Perrone
    University of California-Santa Barbara

  • Marie-Amelie George
    Wake Forest University

Past Recipients

2023

Emilie Connolly (Brandeis University)

"Fiduciary Colonialism: Annuities and Native Dispossession in Early America" American Historical Review (March 2022): 223-253

2022

Christopher Clements

“‘There isn’t no trouble at all if the state law would keep out’: Indigenous People and New York’s Carceral State=” Journal of American History 108 (September 2021): 296-319

2021

Gloria McCahon Whiting

"Race, Slavery, and the Problem of Numbers in Early New England: A View from Probate Court" William and Mary Quarterly, 77, no.3 (2020):405-440

2020

Maureen Brady

“The Forgotten History of Metes and Bound,” The Yale Law Journal 128, no. 4 (2019): 872–1173.

2019

Maggie Blackhawk

“Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State” Yale Law Journal 127 (2018): 1538-1637.

2018

Noam Maggor

“To Coddle and Caress These Great Capitalists: Eastern Money, Frontier Populism, and the Politics of Market-Making in the American West" American Historical Review 122 (2017): 55-84.

2017

Sara Mayeux

“What Gideon Did” 116 Columbia Law Review (2016): 15-103.

2016

Daragh Grant

“The Treaty of Hartford (1638): Reconsidering Jurisdiction in Southern New England” William and Mary Quarterly 72 (2015): 461-498.

2015

Gregory Ablavsky

“The Savage Constitution” Duke Law Journal, 63 (Feb. 2014): 999-1089.

2014

Nicholas Parrillo

“Leviathan and Interpretive Revolution: The Administrative State, the Judiciary, and the Rise of Legislative History, 1890-1950” Yale Law Journal 123 (2013): 266-411.

2013

Justin Driver

“The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court” California Law Review, 100 (2012): 1101-1167.

2012

David Freeman Engstrom

“The Lost Origins of American Fair Employment Law: Regulatory Choice and the Making of Modern Civil Rights, 1943-1972” Stanford Law Review, 63 (2011): 1071-1143.

2011

Krishanti Vignarajah

“The Political Roots of Judicial Legitimacy: Explaining the Enduring Validity of the Insular Cases” University of Chicago Law Review, 77 (2010): 781-845.