Current Announcements
::2014 Annual Meeting::
The 2014 meeting of the American Society for Legal History will take place in Denver, Colorado, November 6-8, 2014. The ASLH invites proposals on any facet or period of legal history, anywhere in the world. We also encourage thematic proposals that range across traditional chronological or geographical fields. In selecting presenters, the Program Committee will give preference to those who did not present at last year's meeting. Travel grants will be available for presenters in need. These resources will nevertheless be limited, and special priority will be given to presenters traveling from abroad, graduate students, post-docs, and independent scholars.
The Program Committee welcomes proposals for both full panels and individual papers, though please note that individual papers are less likely to be accepted. As concerns panels, the Program Committee encourages the submission of a variety of different types of proposals, including: traditional 3-paper panels (with a separate commentator and chair); incomplete 2-paper panels (with a separate commentator and chair), which the Committee will try to complete with at least 1 more paper; panels of 4 or more papers (with a separate commentator and chair); thematic panels that range across traditional chronological or geographical fields; author-meets-reader panels; roundtable discussions.
The Program Committee welcomes proposals for both full panels and individual papers, though please note that individual papers are less likely to be accepted. The Program Committee encourages the submission of a variety of different types of panel proposals, including: traditional 3-paper panels (with a separate chair-commentator); incomplete panels lacking either one paper or a chair-commentator (whether 2-paper panels with a chair-commentator, or 3-paper panels without a chair-commentator), which the Committee will try to complete; author-meets-reader panels; and roundtable discussions.
All panel proposals should include the following: A single page listing the panel title, the titles of each paper, complete contact information for each presenter (including chair-commentator), and any special scheduling requests. (Note that we may not be able to accommodate all scheduling requests.); a 300-word description of the panel; a c.v. for each presenter; and for paper-based panels only: a 300-word abstract of each paper.Individual paper proposals should include a c.v. for the presenter (including complete contact information) and a 300 word abstract of the paper.
The deadline for submitting proposals is 1 March 2014. Proposals should be sent as email attachments to proposals@aslh.net. Substantive questions should be directed to Joanna Grisinger (joanna.grisinger@northwestern.edu) or Mitra Sharafi (sharafi@wisc.edu). Those unable to send proposals as email attachments may mail hard copies to: 2014 ASLH Program Committee, c/o Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin, Law School, 975 Bascom Mall, Madison WI, 53706-1399, USA.
::Announcements::
Timothy S. Huebner has compiled the Fall 2013 list of New Books in American legal and Constitutional history, which is now available at the “New Books” link. Links to previous lists are availible at the bottom of the current list. Authors and publishers are encouraged to submit information on forthcoming books to huebner@rhodes.edu.
A new section complied by John Wertheimer containing legal history syllabi submitted by H-law members is now available in the "Resources" section under the "Teach Legal History," link. If you would like to contribute a syllabi for inclusion please submit it tojowertheimer@davidson.edu.
::Awards::
Congratulations to the winners of the ASLH 2013 awards.
The John Phillip Read Book Award for 2013 went to John Fabian Witt of Yale University Law School for Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Free Press, 2012).
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize for 2013 went to Jonathan Levy of Princeton University, for Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Harvard University Press, 2012).
The Surrency Prize for 2013 was awarded to Laura M. Weinrib for her essay, “The Sex Side of Civil Liberties: United States v. Dennett and the Changing Face of Free Speech,” which appeared in Law and History Review, Volume 30, Number 2, at pages 325-386.
The Sutherland Prize for 2013 was awarded to John Baker, "Deeds Speak Louder Than Words: Covenants and the Law of Proof, 1290-1321," in Laws, Lawyers, and Texts: Studies in Medieval Legal History in Honour of Paul Brand, Susanne Jenks, Jonathan Rose and Christopher Whittic eds. (Brill, 2012).
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Article Prize for 2013 went to Justin Driver of the University of Texas, Austin School of Law, for his article “The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court,” which appeared in volume 100 of the California Law Reveiw in 2012 at pages 1101-1167.
The Paul Murphy Prize for 2013 was awarded to Hidetaka Hirota of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, for Before Ellis Island: The Origins of American Immigration Policy, and to Laura Weinrib of The University of Chicago Law School, for The Taming of Free Speech.
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Dissertation Prize for 2013 went to Hidetaka Hirota of Boston College, for “Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1837-1883.”
Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars for 2013 are Matthew A. Axtell, for the paper "Customs of the River: Governing the Commons within a Nineteenth-Century Steamboat Economy," and Elizabeth Papp Kamali, for the paper "A Feloniuos State of Mind: Felony and Mens Rae in Medieval England."