Jane Burbank Global Legal History Article Prize

Criteria

Best article in global legal history published in the previous year.

Amount

$250

Deadline

June 1, 2026

The Jane Burbank Article Prize in global legal history will be awarded annually to the best article in regional, global, imperial, comparative, or transnational legal history published in the previous calendar year. Submissions may address any topic or period, and may focus on case studies in which the analysis relates to broader processes or comparisons. Articles on methodological or theoretical contributions are also welcome. Nominated articles should be published in English and have appeared in scholarly journals.

Annual nominations or self-nominations for the Burbank Prize are due June 1. Applicants should send an electronic copy of the nominated work to burbankprize@aslh.net.

Committee Members

  • Will Smiley (chair)
    University of New Hampshire

  • Sam Fury Childs Daly
    University of Chicago

  • Melodie Eichbauer
    Florida Gulf Coast University

  • Yanna Yannakakis
    Emory University

  • Will Hanley
    Florida State University

Past Recipients

2025

Du Fei

“Fatima’s Inheritance: Law, Islam, and Gendered Archive-Making in India’s Early Modern Global Connections” Past and Present 266:1 (2025): 40-74.

2025

Honorable Mention: Rui Hua

“The Cheese, the Worm, and the Law: Grassroots Legal Cosmopolitanism in the Manchurian Borderland, 1906-1927,” Modern Asian Studies 58:4 (2024): 1201-1221.

2024

Sarah Balakrishnan

“Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957” Comparative Studies in Society and History 65:2 (2023): 296-320

2024

Honorable Mention: Max Mishler

“‘Improper and Almost Rebellious Conduct’ Enslaved People’s Legal Politics and Abolition in the British Empire” American Historical Review, 128:2 (2023): 648–684.

2023

Will Smiley

“Rebellion, Sovereignty, and Islamic Law in the Ottoman Age of Revolutions” Law and History Review 40:2 (2022): 229-259

2023

Honorable Mention: Juandrea Bates

“Unaccompanied Minors and Fraudulent Fathers: Civil Law in the Unmaking of Immigrant Family in Buenos Aires, 1869– 1920 Hispanic American Historical Review 102:1 (2022): 95-126

2023

Honorable Mention: Alexandre Pelegrino

"From Slaves to Índios: Empire, Slavery, and Race (Maranhão, Brazil, c.1740–90)" Law and History Review 40:4 (2022): 789-815

2022

Nathaniel Millett

“Law, Lineage, Gender and the Lives of Enslaved Indigenous People on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean” William & Mary Quarterly 78:4 (October) 2021, pp.687-720

2021

Kalyani Ramnath

“Intertwined Itineraries: Debt, Decolonization, and International Law in Post-World War II South Asia” Law and History Review, 38, no. 1 (February 2020), 1-24.

2020

Bianca Premo and Yanna Yannakakis

“A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond,” American Historical Review 124, no. 1 (2019).

Related Awards

  • ASLH Early Career Global Legal History Research Fellowships
    This new initiative is intended to provide funding for early career scholars, publishing in English, who are working on projects in legal history relating to non-U. S. history topics. Non-U. S. history topics refers to research that does not qualify for the fellowships awarded by the Cromwell Foundation in coordination with the ASLH. View Award
  • Craig Joyce Medal
    The Society depends on the volunteer labors of its members. It is fortunate in the number of its members who are willing to join in the business of the Society, which is to foster scholarship and teaching in the broad field of legal history. View Award
  • Surrency Prize
    The Surrency Prize is awarded annually for the best article published in the Society’s journal, the Law and History Review, in the previous year. The prize is named in honor of Erwin C. Surrency, a founding member and first president of the Society and for many years the editor of its former publication, the American Journal of Legal History. View Award