Cromwell Dissertation Prize

Criteria

Best dissertation in American legal history completed in the past year.

Amount

$5,000

Deadline

June 1, 2026

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best dissertation in any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies, although topics dealing with the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference.

The author of the winning dissertation receives $5,000. Anyone who received a Ph.D. or S.J.D. in the previous calendar year will be eligible for this year’s prize, which is awarded by the Foundation after a review of the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History.

Submissions should be made by the author including only (1) the dissertation as submitted to the university for the degree and (2) a curriculum vitae.

To be considered for this year’s prize, the author should e-mail a PDF electronic copy of the dissertation and author curriculum vitae to John Gordan (johngordan3@gmail.com) and the prize committee chair (cromwelldissertationprize@aslh.net) with the subject heading: CROMWELL DISSERTATION PRIZE SUBMISSION. Please title the PDF as “author last name” and “short title”.pdf (e.g.: Thompson Whigs and Hunters.pdf).”

Submissions should arrive by June 1.

Committee Members

John D. Gordan, III
Secretary of the Cromwell Foundation
1133 Park Avenue
New York, NY, 10128
Kristin Olbertson (chair)
Alma College
Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez
University of Illinois, Chicago
Mintae Cha
Notre Dame
Amy Dru Stanley
University of Chicago
Steven Wilf
University of Connecticut

Past Recipients

2025

“Measuring Ground: Surveyors and the Properties of States in the Great Lakes Region, 1783-1840.” Queen’s University, 2024

2025

Shay R. Olmstead

“’Refuse to Run Away’: Transsexual Workers Fight for Civil Rights, 1969-1992." University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2024

2024

“Constitutional Religion: Presbyterians between the British and American Empires” --a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Princeton University

2023

Alexander M. Cors

“Newcomers and New Borders: Migration, Settlement, and Conflict over Land along the Mississippi River, 1750-1820” --a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Emory University

2022

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez

“Undocumented Youth: The Labor, Education, and Rights of Migrant Children in Twentieth Century America” --a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Columbia University

2021

Alyssa G. Penick

“The Churches of Our Government: Parishes, Property, and Power in the Colonial and Early National Chesapeake” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

2020

Sonia Tycko

“Captured Consent: Bound Service and Freedom of Contract in Early Modern England and English America” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Harvard University.

2019

Jonathan Lande

“Disciplining Freedom: U.S. Army Slave Rebels and Emancipation During the Civil War” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Brown University.

2018

Allison Powers

“Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Columbia University.

2017

Maeve Herbert Glass

“These United States: A History of the Fracturing of America” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Princeton University.

2016

Suzanne Kahn

“Divorce and the Politics of the American Social Welfare Regime, 1969-2001” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Columbia University.

2015

Sarah Levine-Gronningsater

“Delivering Freedom: Gradual Emancipation, Black Legal Culture, and the Origins of Sectional Crisis in New York, 1759-1870" —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at University of Chicago.

2014

Elisa Martia Alvarez Minoff

“Free to Move? The Law and Politics of Internal Migration in Twentieth-Century America” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Harvard University.

2013

Hidetaka Hirota

“Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1837-1883” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Boston College.

2012

Laura M. Weinrib

“The Liberal Compromise: Civil Liberties, Labor, and the Limits of State Power, 1917– 1940” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Princeton University.

2011

Cynthia Nicoletti

“The Great Question of the War: The Legal Status of Secession in the Aftermath of the American Civil War, 1865-1869” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.

2010

Anna Leah Fidelis T. Castañeda

"Creating Exceptional Empire: American Liberal Constitutionalism and the Construction of the Constitutional Order of the Philippine Islands, 1898-1935" —a dissertation submitted for the SJD degree at Harvard University.

2009

Jed Shugerman

“The People's Courts: The Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial Power in America” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Yale University.

2008

Diana Williams

“They Call It Marriage: the Louisiana Interracial Family and the Making of American Legitimacy" —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Harvard University.

2007

Christopher Beauchamp

“The Telephone Patents: Intellectual Property, Business and the Law in the United States and Britain, 1876-1900” —a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.