Peter Gonville Stein Book Award

Criteria

Best book in legal history (written in English) outside the field of US legal history, published during the previous calendar year.

Amount

$500

Deadline

June 1, 2026

The Peter Gonville Stein Book Award is awarded annually for the best book in non-US 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 regions outside the United States, as well as global and international history. To be eligible, a book must 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.

The Stein Award Committee will accept nominations from authors, presses, or anyone else, of any book (not including textbooks, critical editions, or collections of essays) that bears a copyright date of the previous calendar year as it appears in the printed version of the book. Nominations for the Stein Award may be made by sending a curriculum vitae of the author and one copy of the book to each member of the committee.

Committee Members

  • Karl Shoemaker (chair)
    University of Wisconsin

    123 N Blount St 506
    Madison, WI 53703

    Both hard copies and e-copies to kbshoemaker@wisc.edu

  • Fahad Bishara
    University of Virginia

    PO Box 200592
    History Program, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
    Zone 70 Street 800 Building 776
    Doha Qatar

    Both hard copies and e-copies to fabishara@gmail.com.

  • Rohit De
    Yale University

    Department of History, Yale University
    320 York Street, Humanities Quadrangle
    New Haven CT 06511

    P.O. Box 208324
    New Haven, CT 06520-8324

    Both hard copies and e-copies to rohit.de@yale.edu

  • Adriana Chira
    Emory University

    Department of History, Emory University
    561 South Kilgo Cir NE
    Atlanta GA 30322-1120

    Both hard copies and electronic copies to achira@emory.edu.

     

Past Recipients

2025

Matthew Sommer

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia University Press, 2024)

2025

Honorable Mention: Laura Benton

The Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton University Press, 2024)

2025

Honorable Mention: Samuel Fury Childs Daly

Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa after Empire (Duke University Press, 2024)

2024

Yanna Yannakakis

Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico Duke University Press

2023

Adriana Chira

Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race Beyond Cuba’s Plantations (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

2022

John Christopoulos

Abortion in Early Modern Italy (Harvard University Press, 2021)

2022

Honorable Mention: Jocelyn Hendrickson

Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa (Harvard University Press, 2021)

2021

Nandini Chatterjee

Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords Across Three Indian Empires (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

2020

Fei-Hsien Wang

Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2019).

2020

Honorable mention: Elizabeth Papp Kamali

Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

2019

Khaled Fahmy

In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (University of California Press, 2018).

2019

Honorable Mention: Rohit De

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

2018

Fahad Ahmad Bishara

A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

2018

Honorable Mention: Tom Lambert

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, 2017).

2017

Matthew Sommer

Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions (University of California Press, 2015).

2017

Honorable Mention: Li Chen

Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, & Transcultural Politics (Columbia University Press 2016)

2017

Honorable Mention: Jessica Marglin

Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016).

Related Awards

  • John Phillip Reid Book Award
    The John Phillip Reid Book Award is awarded annually for the best monograph by a mid-career or senior scholar, published in English in any of the fields defined broadly as Anglo-American legal history. The prize is named for John Phillip Reid, the prolific legal historian and founding member of the Society, and made possible by the generous contributions of his friends and colleagues. View Award
  • 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
  • Cromwell Book Prize
    The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize is awarded annually to the best book in the field of American legal history by an early career scholar. The prize is designed to recognize and promote new work in the field by graduate students, law students, post-doctoral fellows and early career faculty. View Award