ABOUT LSA

Prizes and Awards

Every year, the LSA recognizes great achievements in the field of Law and Society. Each award has a Prize Committee that reviews nominations and selects winners. An LSA membership is required to submit an awards nomination. Nominations for 2024 awards are closed.

PRIZE

Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize

The Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize is awarded annually (biennially prior to 1999) for “empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society.”

Nominations are open to all forms of law and society scholarship, and from any country of origin, although copies submitted to the committee must be in English.

It is not a book award, nor is it a career achievement award, but is given in recognition of a body of scholarly work, including some portion of work having been completed within the past few years. Self-nominations are accepted.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Christopher Lawrence Tomlins – University of California, Berkeley

Christopher Tomlins is the Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program at University of California, Berkeley.  Previously, he served as Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Irvine, on the research faculty at the American Bar Foundation, and on the faculty at La Trobe University, Melbourne (Australia). He received his PhD in History from the Johns Hopkins University in 1981, following  undergraduate degrees at Oxford and Sussex Universities (UK).  

He is a scholar of remarkable productivity and range; the author of four important monographs and of many articles and chapters in renowned outlets, also the editor or co-editor of another five volumes. Throughout his work, he contributes deep and extensive insights concerning the 500 years of American labor and employment history. He draws from a dazzling variety of primary archival and secondary materials, displaying rare erudition while advancing challenging interpretations. Not least of his achievements has been to show how much of social experience and legal institutions are revealed in the everyday regulation of work and employment. 

His first book, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960, challenged the conventional wisdom that the New Deal secured important advances for the trade union movement, showing how a conservative judiciary helped to align union and state interests.  In Law, Labor, and Ideology, Tomlins shifted to an earlier period of U.S. history – post-Revolution to mid-19th century – tracking the ways in which alternative legal resources for regulating labor, in particular policing powers, competed unsuccessfully with legal-liberal regulation by property and contract law.  His third major work, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865, received multiple awards (e.g., Bancroft and Hurst) for its intricate account of the demographics of labor and colonizing, manning and planting, across three varied regions of colonial America. Each region displayed its demographically-based mixtures of freedom and servitude, and each traveled its own distinctive path of development. The common thread uniting this plural sociolegal world was the project of colonizing as a law-saturated and law-constituted enterprise. Law legitimated colonizing; law authorized the movement of people and labor; and law furnished the basic resource for governing colonial societies.  His most recent monograph, In the Matter of Nat Turner, takes up a much-studied event to reveal unexpected intersections of slavery, political economy, and religion. 

With unmatched pleasure and pride, we award to Christopher Tomlins the 2023  Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize for his continuing and most distinguished empirical contributions to the advancement of law and society research.  

Michael McCann – University of Washington

The Kalven Prize is given for empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society. Michael’s many nominators point out that he is richly deserving of the award in those terms. His outstanding contributions to our field include not just his intellectual contributions, but also his extensive mentoring, his role in founding an important Law and Society program at the University of Washington, and his gracious service to the Association.  

Michael’s research has not merely contributed to but serves as the basis for new scholarship in the subfields of: law and political mobilization; cause lawyering; rights claiming; and the politics of tort law.  In Rights at Work (winner of the LSA Jacob Book prize, among others) Michael explores how law shapes, and is used by, equal pay activists to advance their movement. Drawing on extensive interviews and analyses of their legal and other tactics, Michael shows us when law matters and when it doesn’t. He also identifies some of the risks of invoking law. As one of his nominators noted, “Many of the insights developed in the book are now so widely acknowledged that it is almost possible to forget that the work was in many ways a response to what was, at the time, widespread academic skepticism about the political utility of rights.” Without denying the limitations of rights, Michael empirically demonstrates that activists can be savvy enough to work within the limitations of rights to effectively use law as a tool for political mobilization. Michael helped create a new model of law and political mobilization that has endured and influenced a generation of scholars exploring the significance of legal consciousness in a variety of contexts, including political mobilization. 

Distorting the Law: Politics, Media and the Litigation Crisis (2004) (with William Haltom and his second LSA Jacob Book Prize winner), seeks to understand how distorted understandings of tort litigation became so widely accepted. Drawing upon extensive interviews, nearly two decades of content analysis of newspaper coverage of tort cases, and case studies of the McDonald’s coffee case and the tobacco litigation, the book provides extensive empirical evidence of the important role of the media in translating stories about law for the general public. In addition to scholarly acclaim for the book, Distorting the Law is widely read by legal practitioners and was an important resource fort the HBO documentary, Hot Coffee 

Michael, turning his attention to comparative projects beyond the United States, co-edited—with David Engel and Anne Bloom—two books which demonstrate his commitment to junior scholars and the importance  of considering the cultural construction of tort law. Entitled, Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice (2009) and Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress, the books explore the cultural dimensions of how injuries are conceptualized and recognized.  

Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism and Racial Capitalism (2020) (with George I. Lovell) further shows Michael’s crucial role in the advancement of research in law and society. In a review in Dissent magazine (Fall 2020), Samuel Bagenstos – a long time civil rights lawyer and law professor – describes Union by Law as a “remarkable” and “timely” book that reminds us that effective legal mobilization is still possible when activists and attorneys work together to frame the litigation in terms that are helpful to building a movement. The book tells the story of Filipino workers in the United States and their struggle to overcome persistent class and race-based discrimination and oppression.  

Michael’s Kalven Prize should include, by reference, his Wheeler prize for outstanding mentoring in the field. Michael has mentored and supervised hundreds of scholars in sociolegal studies, his own and those in myriad institutions across the globe. He founded and, for more than a decade, directed the unique and influential Law and Society Program at the University of Washington. That program includes a certificate program for Ph.D. students and a center for comparative law and society research.  

As one of the letters submitted in support of his nomination concludes: 

Michael wrote a short piece for Law and Courts (Spring, 1996) called “It’s Only Law and Courts But I Like It” (after the Rolling Stones). It’s a wonderful essay expressing his enthusiasm for the field, which is truly contagious. But we think it’s also appropriate because, for many of us, Michael is the “Mick Jagger” of our field. His body of scholarship has had, and will continue to have, a significant and enduring impact on our field and on all those who rely on Law and Society scholarship to use legal activism to make the world a better place.  

Michael McCann is richly deserving of the 2023 Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Prize 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
2023
Christopher Lawrence Tomlins
University of California, Berkeley
Michael McCann
University of Washington
2022
Herbert M. Kritzer
University of Minnesota
Elizabeth Mertz
American Bar Foundation & University of Wisconsin
2021
Joachim J. Savelsberg
University of Minnesota
2020
Terence C. Halliday
American Bar Foundation
Margaret Kwoka
University of Denver-Sturm College of Law
2019
Bryant Garth
University of California, Irvine, Law
2018
Lauren B. Edelman
University of California, Berkeley
2017
David Engel
SUNY, Buffalo
Neil Vidmar
Duke University
2016
Mariana Valverde
University of Toronto
2015
Malcolm Feeley
University of California, Berkeley
Kitty Calavita
University of California, Irvine
2014
Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell University
Kim Lane Scheppele
Princeton University
2013
Donald Black
University of Virginia
Franklin Zimring
University of California, Berkeley
2012
John Hagan
2011
Carol J. Greenhouse
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
2010
Shari Seidman Diamond
2009
Susan S. Silbey
2008
Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff
2007
Sally Engle Merry
2006
Robert A. Kagan
2005
Sally Falk Moore
2004
John Braithwaite
2003
Philip Selznick
2002
Jane Collier
David Trubek
2001
Stuart Scheingold
2000
E. Allan Lind, Tom R. Tyler
1999
Martha L. Fineman
Joel F. Handler
1997
Richard Lempert
Austin Sarat
1995
Stewart Macaulay, Laura Nader
1993
Marc Galanter
1992
Lawrence Friedman
1989
Richard Abel
1987
John Heinz and Edward Lauman
David Baldus, Charles Pulaski, George Woodworth
1983
Hans Ziesel

Nominations Require:

  • A letter of support from the nominator
  • The candidate’s curriculum vitae
  • 1 of 2 additional letters of support will be accepted, but are not required.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

Herbert Jacob Book Prize

The Herbert Jacob Book Prize annual competition is open to books from all fields of, and approaches to, law and society scholarship published in the previous year (excluding works of legal history, which are considered for the Hurst Prize).

Textbooks, casebooks, and edited collections are not eligible for the award, but monographs will be considered. Nominations are accepted from all aspects of the field and any country of origin and may include first books of young scholars and books that are capstones of long careers in law and society research and publication. Self nominations are accepted. Nominators must be current LSA members.

The responsibility of ensuring that a work is submitted for the most appropriate book prize rests with the nominator. As a rule of thumb, books that have a significant historical focus should be directed to the Hurst Prize, while other works of socio-legal scholarship should be directed to the Jacob Prize.  A book submitted for both prizes may end up being considered for neither. 

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winner

Ke Li – City University of New York – John Jay College

Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2022)

Marriage Unbound reveals devastating inequalities in Chinese divorce courts. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic field research and in-depth archival data, Professor Li documents collusion among judges and lawyers that force disadvantaged rural women to accept unfair divorce settlements. With lucid prose and a wealth of empirical evidence, Li theorizes the complex interplay between culture and the state and develops a rich historical analysis of authoritarian legality. Her work exposes how culture and statecraft profoundly shape legal mobilization and how judicialization reproduces gender inequalities in contemporary China. 

Honorable Mention

Randle C. DeFalco – University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law

Invisible Atrocities: The Aesthetic Biases of International Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Invisible Atrocities investigates the role of aesthetics and human emotion in the conceptualization of international crimes. Drawing on historical examples and his experience as a legal advisor in Cambodia, Professor DeFalco argues that international criminal law reflects elite sensibilities in the Global North and privileges certain forms of violence. The aesthetic bias toward horrific spectacle obscures more banal forms of violence, such as famine creation, corruption, aid interference, or socioeconomic oppression. DeFalco argues that emotional responses to atrocity aesthetics drive the practice of international criminal law and frequently undermine the goals and values of international justice.  

 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Book
2023
Ke Li
City University of New York – John Jay College
Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2022)
Honorable Mention
Randle C. DeFalco
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law
Invisible Atrocities: The Aesthetic Biases of International Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
2022
Reuben Jonathan Miller
University of Chicago & American Bar Foundation
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
Honorable Mention
Poulami Roychowdhury
McGill University
Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Honorable Mention
Spencer Headworth
Purdue University
Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention
Swethaa S Ballakrishnen
University of California, Irvine
Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility (Princeton University Press, 2021)
2021
Arzoo Osanloo
University of Washington
Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims’ Rights in Iran (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Honorable Mention
Sarah Brayne
University of Texas at Austin
Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Honorable Mention
Sarah Esther Lageson
Rutgers University
Digital Punishment: Privacy, Stigma, and the Harms of Data-Driven Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2020)
2020
Jeffrey S. Kahn
University of California-Davis
Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2019)
2018
Daphna Hacker
Tel Aviv University
Legalized Families in the Era of Bordered Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Alisha C. Holland
Princeton University
Forbearance as Redistribution. The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Honorable Mention
Amada Armenta
University of Pennsylvania
Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement (University of California Press, 2017)
Honorable Mention
Jeffrey R. Dudas
University of Connecticut
Raised Right: Fatherhood in Modern American Conservatism (Stanford University Press, 2017)
2017
Roberto Gonzalez
Harvard University
Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America (University of California Press, 2016)
Tianna Paschel
University of California, Berkeley
Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil (Princeton University Press, 2016)
2016
Ellen Berrey
University of Denver
The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Leila Kawar
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France (Cambridge University Press Law and Society Series, June 2015)
2015
Osagie Obasogie
University of California, Hastings
Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind (Stanford University Press, 2014)
2014
Mark Fathi Massoud
University of California, Santa Cruz
Law's Fragile State Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
2013
Mariana Valverde
University of Toronto
Everyday Law on the Streets: City Governance in an Age of Diversity (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
2012
Kaaryn S. Gustafson
Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty, New York University Press
Joshua Page
The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California, Oxford University Press
2011
Yves Dezalay, Bryant Garth
Asian Legal Revivals: Lawyers in the Shadow of Empire, University of Chicago Press
2010
Jeannie Suk
At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution is Transforming Privacy, Yale University Press
2009
Steven M. Teles
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, Princeton University Press
Richard A. Leo
Police Interrogation and American Justice, Harvard University Press
2008
Lisa Hilbink
Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile, Cambridge University Press
Elizabeth Mertz
The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer”, Oxford University Press
2007
Susan F. Hirsch
In the Moment of Greatest Calamity: Terrorism, Grief,and a Victim's Quest for Justice, Princeton University Press
2006
Jon B. Gould
Speak No Evil: The Triumph of Hate Speech Regulation, University of Chicago
Craig Haney
Death by Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System, Oxford University Press
2005
William Haltom, Michael McCann
Distorting the Law: Politics, Media and the Litigation Crisis, University of Chicago Press
2004
John R. Bowen
Washington University
Islam, Law, and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
2003
Keith Hawkins
Oriel College at University of Oxford
Law as Last Resort: Prosecution Decision-Making in a Regulatory Agency (Oxford University Press, 2002)
2002
Brian Tamanaha
St. John's Law School
A General Jurisprudence of Law and Society (Oxford University Press, 2001)
2000
Eve Darian-Smith
University of California, Santa Barbara
Bridging Divides: The Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe (University of California Press, 1999)
Mariana Valverde
University of Toronto
Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
1998
Bryant Garth, Yves Dezalay
American Bar Foundation, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Dealing in Virtue: International commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
1996
Michael McCann
University of Washington
Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson and David M. Engel
Law and Community in Three American Towns (Cornell University Press, 1994)

Nominations Require:

  • Nominators must be current LSA members.
  • To stress the restriction stated above, books eligible for the Jacob Prize may be from any field of socio-legal scholarship except history; books with a significant historical focus should be submitted instead to the Association’s Hurst Prize. 
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • Books must be published in English, or be English translations of original works. 
  • Books submitted must have a copyright date (regardless of actual publication dates) during the calendar year prior to the award ceremony.
  • Page proofs may be sent if the book will be published soon with the proper year’s date.
  • Self-nominations are accepted.
  • Copies of the book are required to be sent directly to the Herbert Jacob Book Prize Committee Members. We will reach out to the publishers of the nominated books and provide them with the addresses for the prize committees directly.
  • OPTIONAL – A letter of support from the nominator, including a synopsis of the book.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

James Willard Hurst Book Prize

The James Willard Hurst Prize is awarded annually (biennially prior to 2002) for the best work in socio-legal history published in the previous year. The field of socio-legal history is broadly defined to include the history of interrelationships between law and social, economic, and political change; the history of functions and impact of legal agencies, legislative and administrative as well as judicial; the social history of the legal profession; and similar topics. Self-nominations are accepted. Nominators must be current LSA members.

Textbooks, casebooks, and edited collections are not eligible for the award, but monographs will be considered. The Association seeks studies in legal history that explore the relationship between law and society or illuminate the use, function, and cultural meaning of law and society. The Association discourages submission of purely doctrinal studies in the evolution of appellate case law.

The responsibility of ensuring that a work is submitted for the most appropriate book prize rests with the nominator. As a rule of thumb, books that have a significant historical focus should be directed to the Hurst Prize, while other works of socio-legal scholarship should be directed to the Jacob Prize.  A book submitted for both prizes may end up being considered for neither. 

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winner

Jessica M Marglin – University of Southern California

The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022)

This beautifully written book powerfully asserts a new theory of legal belonging. Using clear prose and stylish organization, The Shamama Case examines the 1873 lawsuit over the will of Nissim Shamama. In deciding how to distribute Shamama’s huge estate, the Italian court had to decide what law should apply, and in order to decide this, the court first had to conclude the deceased’s nationality. As a Jewish man from Tunisia, the question arose whether he was subject to the laws of Italy or the Bey of Tunis. Was the deceased’s nationality “Jewish?” Was he “stateless?” Marglin’s analysis of the Shamama case offers a powerful and effective focus for exploring the concept of “legal belonging” as an analytical category, in contrast to more standard ideas of citizenship and nationality.

The committee was particularly impressed at Marglin’s extensive research. She amassed archival data from several countries, translating a wide variety of documents from multiple languages. Her argument excellently captures the ambiguities and subtleties of historical experience; interweaves social, cultural, and personal components of the case among the legal elements; and adeptly centers the uncertainty of nationality within this place in history. The result is stunning historical research across jurisdictions and across several languages. It reads almost like a griping trade book one would take on vacation, so enjoyable is its pose.

Honorable Mention

Robert Travers  – Cornell University 

Empires of Complaints: Mughal Law and the Making of British India, 1765-93 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Empires of Complaints pushes against established understandings, using historical methods to further law & society scholarship. Travers makes a critical theoretical intervention in analyzing competing systems of law. Directly engaging in this burgeoning area of legal history scholarship, Travers explores how the existing system of laws becomes co-opted by the new laws of colonizers. He documents the steady creation of the new colonial taxation and civil law in 18th century India through the East India Company selectively adapting and reworking of Mughal norms and precedents. Yet Travers challenges the conventional top-down approach to legal history by showing how Mughal or native law can become very resilient within a colonial setting. This very ambitious worked demanded Travers move beyond the British-cenrtric frame to go deep into Mughal archives. In doing so, he identified more push-back against British colonizing law that had been understood.

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Book
2023
Jessica M Marglin
University of Southern California
The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022)
Honorable Mention
Robert Travers
Cornell University
Empires of Complaints: Mughal Law and the Making of British India, 1765-93 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
2022
Gregory Ablavsky
Stanford University
Federal Ground: Governing Property and Violence in the First U.S. Territories (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention
Nada Moumtaz
University of Toronto
God’s Property: Islam, Charity and the Modern State (University of California Press, 2021)
2021
Samuel Fury Childs Daly
Duke University
A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Honorable Mention
Durba Mitra
Harvard University
Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020))
2020
Leor Halevi
Vanderbilt University
Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida 1865-1935 (Columbia University Press, 2019)
Honorable Mention
Sarah Seo
University of Iowa
Policing the Open Road (Harvard University Press, 2019)
2019
Rohit De
Yale University
A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press)
Kimberly M. Welch
Vanderbilt University
Black Litigants in Antebellum America (UNC Press)
2018
Fahad Ahmad Bishara
Cambridge University Press 2017
A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean Cambridge A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean Cambridge
2017
Heather Thompson
University of Michigan
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy Pantheon Books, 2016
2016
Felice Batlan
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863–1945 Cambridge University Press 2015
2015
Mitra Sharafi
University of Wisconsin
Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947 Cambridge University Press, 2014
2014
Nicholas Parrillo
Yale Law School
Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940 Yale University Press 2013
2013
John Witt
Yale University
Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History The Free Press
2012
Amy Chazkel
Laws of Chance: Brazil’s Clandestine Lottery and the Making of Urban Public Life, Duke University Press
Daniel J. Sharfstein
The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey From Black to White, Penguin Press
2011
Inga Markovits
Justice in Luritz: Experiencing Socialist Law in East Germany, Princeton University Press
Christopher Tomlins
Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865, Cambridge University Press
2010
Peggy Pascoe
What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, Oxford University Press
2009
James A. Brundage
The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts, University of Chicago Press
Ariela J. Gross
What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, Harvard University Press
2008
Risa L. Goluboff
The Lost Promise of Civil Rights, Harvard University Press
Mary Dewhurst Lewis
The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918 1940, Stanford University Press
2007
Nancy McLean
Freedom Is Not Enough, The Opening Up of the American Workplace, Harvard University Press
2006
Holly Brewer
By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press
2005
John Fabian Witt
The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law Harvard University Press, 2004
2004
Bruce H. Mann
Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence, Harvard University Press
Daniel Lord Smail
The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423, Cornell University Press
2003
Lauren Benton
Law and Colonial Cultures, Cambridge University Press
2002
Sally Engle Merry
Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law, Princeton University Press
2000
Victoria Saker Woeste
The Farmer's Benevolent Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in Industrial America, 1865-1945, University of North Carolina Press
1998
Leslie J. Reagan
When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, University of California Press
1996
Marianne Constable
The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and the Changing Conceptions of Citizenship, Law and Knowledge, University of Chicago Press
1994
Christopher L. Tomlins
Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic, Cambridge University Press
1992
Theodore L. Steinberg
Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England, Cambridge University Press
Constance B. Backhouse
Petticoats and Prejudice: Woman and Law in Nineteenth Century Canada, Osgoode Society of Women's Press
1990
Martin J. Sklar
Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916, Cambridge University Press
G. Edward White
The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-35, MacMillan Press
1988
David Langum
Law and Community on the Mexican-California Frontier, University of Oklahoma Press
Arthur McEvoy
The Fisherman's Problem, Cambridge University Press
1986
Edward Ayers
Vengeance and Justice, Oxford University Press
Richard Ferguson
Law and Letters in American Culture, Harvard University Press
1984
Peter H. Irons
New Deal Lawyers, Princeton University Press
1982
Lawrence Friedman and Robert Percival
The Roots of Justice : Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910. University of North Carolina Press
1980
Joseph H. Smith and Julius H. Goebel
The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton: Documents and Commentary. Columbia University Press

Nominations Require:

  • Nominators must be current LSA members.
  • Books must be published in English, or be English translations of original works. 
  • Books submitted must have a copyright date (regardless of actual publication dates) during the calendar year prior to the award ceremony.
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • Self-nominations are accepted.
  • Copies of the book are required to be sent directly to the J. Willard Hurst Book Prize Committee Members. We will reach out to the publishers of the nominated books and provide them with the addresses for the prize committees directly.
  • Page proofs may be sent if the book will be published soon with the proper year’s date.
  • OPTIONAL – A letter of support from the nominator, including a synopsis of the book.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

Article Prize

The Law and Society Association Article Prize recognizes exceptional scholarship in socio-legal studies for a journal article or chapter in an edited book. Articles may be published in any scholarly journal, including socio-legal journals, journals in other disciplines, and law reviews. Self-nominations are accepted.

The competition is open to all forms of law and society scholarship, to authors at any stage of their careers, and to authors from any country of origin.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Fabio de Sa e Silva – University of Oklahoma

Fabio de Sa e Silva is Associate Professor of International Studies and the Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He studies the social organization and impact of law and lawyers in Brazil and comparatively. Currently, Fabio is one of the organizers of the Project on Autocratic Legalism (PAL),an LSAInternational Research Collaborative that is designing comparative research on how rising autocrats use law to amass power and what can be done to stop their moves. In this capacity, he also hosts the PAL Cast, a podcast series where he interviews lead scholars on law and (un)democratic politics. 

“Relational legal consciousness and anticorruption:
Lava Jato, social media interactions, and the co-production of law’s detraction in Brazil (2017–2019)” Law & Society Review, 2021

Emily Ryo – USC Gould School of Law

Emily Ryo is a professor of law and sociology at the USC Gould School of Law. She received a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her research focuses on immigration enforcement, immigration detention, and access to justice for immigrants. Her work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the American Bar Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She has published widely in both leading sociology and law journals, including the American Sociological Review, Law and Society Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Minnesota Law Review.

 

 

 

Ian G Peacock – University of California, Los Angeles

Ian Peacock is a first-year law student and a Rubenstein Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Before law school, Ian completed his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ian has an ever-expanding set of research interests, but he has mostly written about organizational theory, administrative and judicial decision-making, criminal justice, and international migration law and policy. Ian’s research has appeared in law reviews such as Immigration and Nationality Law Review and Southern California Law Review. His work has also appeared in interdisciplinary law journals, including Journal of Empirical Legal Studies and Law & Society Review, and generalist social science journals including American Behavioral Scientist and Socius. 

“The Study of Pandemic and Stigma Effects in Removal Proceedings”. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2022)

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Article
2023
Fabio de Sa e Silva
University of Oklahoma
Relational legal consciousness and anticorruption: Lava Jato, social media interactions, and the co-production of law’s detraction in Brazil (2017–2019) (Law & Society Review, 2021).
Emily Ryo, Ian G Peacock
USC Gould School of Law; University of California, Los Angeles
The Study of Pandemic and Stigma Effects in Removal Proceedings (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2022)
2022
Rachel E López, Terrell Carter, Kempis "Ghani" Songster
Drexel University, Social Justice Activist, Healing Futures Restorative Justice Diversion Program
Redeeming Justice (Northwestern University Law Review).
Honorable Mention
Ya-Wen Lei
Harvard University
Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention in China’s Platform Economy, (American Sociological Review)
2021
Rachel E. Stern & Lawrence J. Liu
University of California-Berkeley & Yale Law School
“The Good Lawyer: State-Led Professional Socialization in Contemporary China,” (Law & Social Inquiry, 2020)
2020
Mitra Sharafi
University of Wisconsin
The Imperial Serologist and Punitive Self-Harm: Bloodstains and Legal Pluralism in British India, in Global Forensic Cultures: Making Fact and Justice in the Modern Era 60 (Ian Burney & Christopher Hamlin eds., 2019).
Honorable Mention
Niina Vuolajarvi
Rutgers University
“Governing in the Name of Caring—the Nordic Model of Prostitution and its Punitive Consequences for Migrants Who Sell Sex” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 16:151-165 (2019)
2019
Michael W Yarbrough
CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice & Graduate Center
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority of Bridewealth in a Post-Apartheid South African Community Law and Social Inquiry 43:3 pp 647-677 (2018)
Honorable Mention
Valerie Jenness and Kitty Calavita
University of California, Irvine
“It Depends on the Outcome”: Prisoners, Grievances, and Perceptions of Justice Law & Society Review 52:1 pp41-72 (2018)
2018
Sarah Brayne
University of Texas at Austin
Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing, American Sociological Review, 2017, Vol. 82(5) 977–1008
Honorable Mention
Hidetaka Hirota
City University of New York-City College
Exclusion on the Ground: Racism, Official Discretion, and the Quotidian Enforcement of General Immigration Law in the Pacific Northwest Borderland,” 2017, American Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 2, June 2017, pp. 347-370
2017
Forrest Stuart
University of Chicago
Becoming Copwise: Policing, Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street Level Criminalization, Law & Society Review 50(2) (2016): 279-313
2016
Ashley T. Rubin
University of Toronto
Law & Society Review 2015
2015
Kathryne Young
Stanford University
Everyone Knows the Game: Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight Law & Society Review, 2014
2014
Issa Kohler-Hausmann
New York University
Managerial Justice and Mass Misdemeanor published in the September 2013 volume of The American Journal of Sociology
2013
Alexandra Natapoff
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
Misdemeanors, Southern California Law Review 85: 1313-1375
2012
Lauren B. Edelman, Linda H. Krieger, Scott R. Eliason, Catherine Albiston, and Virginia Mellema
“When Organizations Rule: Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Employment Structures” American Journal of Sociology 117: 888-954 (2011)
2011
Joseph A. Conti
“Learning to Dispute: Repeat Participation, Expertise, and Reputation at the World Trade Organization” Law & Social Inquiry 35:1, 625-62 (2010)
2010
Anders Walker
“The Violent Bear It Away: Emmett Till and the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi” 46 San Diego Law Review 459, 2009
2009
Terence C. Halliday and Bruce G. Carruthers
“The Recursivity of Law: Global Norm Making and National Lawmaking in the Globalization of Corporate Insolvency Regimes" American Journal of Sociology 112(January): 1135-1202 (2007)
John Hagan, Gabrielle Ferrales, and Guillermina Jasso
"How Law Rules: Torture, Terror, and the Normative Judgments of Iraqi Judges," Law & Society Review 42(3): 605-643 (2008)
2008
James J. Willis, Stephen D. Mastrofski, and David Weisburd
“Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory‑Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments” Law and Society Review 41(1): 147‑188 (2007)
2007
Eric Feldman
“The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World’s Premier Fish Market” California Law Review 94: 313-69. (2007)
2006
Joachim J. Savelsberg and Ryan D. King
"Institutionalizing Collective Memories of Hate: Law and Law Enforcement in Germany and the United States" American Journal of Sociology, 111, 2 (2005) 579-616.
2005
Lucy E. Salyer
"Baptism by Fire: Race, Military Service, and U.S. Citizenship Policy, 1918B1935" The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 3, December 2004: 847 876
2004
Paul Frymer
"Acting When Elected Officials Won't: Federal Courts and Civil Rights Enforcements in U.S. Labor Unions, 1935-95," 97(3) American Political Science Review, 1-17 (2003)
2003
Susan Bibler Coutin, Bill Maurer, and Barbara Yngvesson
"In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization," 27 Law & Social Inquiry, 801 (2002)
2002
James Liebman
"The Overproduction of Death," Columbia Law Review 100 (2000) 2030-2156
Laura Beth Nielsen
"Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment, Law & Society Review, (2000), 1055-1090
2001
Scott Phillips and Ryken Grattett
"Judicial Rhetoric: Meaning Making and the Institutionalization of Hate Crime Law," 34 Law & Society Review 567-606
2000
Mary Vogel, Bruce Western and Katherine Becket
"The Social Origins of Plea Bargaining: Conflict and the Law in the Process of State Formation, 1830-1860," 33 Law & Society Review 161-246"How Unregulated Is the U.S. Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution," 104 American Journal of Sociology, 1030-1060.
1999
Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise, and Andrew P. Morriss
"Charting the Influence of the Judicial Mind" New York University Law Review, 73(5):1377-1499
1998
David M. Engel and Frank W. Munger
"Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation of Difference" Law & Society Review 30:1, pp 7-54

Nominations Require:

  • Nominators must be current LSA members.
  • Article copies submitted to the committee must be in English.
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • The article must have a publication date within the two calendar years prior to the awards ceremony. Articles will only be considered once within the two-year period of eligibility.
  • The full article, including full bibliographic citation.
  • OPTIONAL – A letter of support from the nominator, including an abstract of the article.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

John Hope Franklin Prize

The John Hope Franklin Prize is awarded annually by the Law and Society Association to recognize exceptional scholarship in the field of Race, Racism and the Law.

The Franklin Prize is awarded for an article published in the two calendar years prior to the award year. The competition is open to all forms of law and society scholarship, to authors at any stage of their careers, and to authors from any country of origin. Articles may be published in any scholarly journal, including socio-legal journals, journals in other disciplines, and law reviews, or may be a chapter in a book volume. Co-authored articles, and self-nominations, may be submitted for consideration.

While there is no limit on the number of articles one may nominate, an article may not be considered for the John Hope Franklin Prize and another LSA award. The decision in determining whether an article should be submitted for consideration for the Franklin Prize, rather than another LSA award, rests with the article’s nominator in consultation with the author.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Devon W Carbado – University of California, Los Angeles

Devon Carbado (University of California Los Angeles) is the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law. His paper “Strict Scrutiny and the Black Body” intervenes to examine how Black people live under a socio-legal regime of strict scrutiny that treats the mere sight of Blackness as a suspect classification. Drawing on the legal analysis of the strict scrutiny doctrine, Carbado illuminates how legal suspicion of Black people is an ongoing racial project in the legal context. By tracing the legal roots of the strict scrutiny doctrine, Carbado’s research presents a persuasive case to take 

 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Publication
2023
Devon W Carbado
University of California, Los Angeles
“Strict Scrutiny and the Black Body”
2022
Frank Edwards & Theresa Rocha Beardall
Rutgers University & University of Washington
“Abolition, Settler Colonialism, and the Persistent Threat of Indian Child Welfare"
Honorable Mention
Robin Walker Sterling
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
“Through a Glass, Darkly: Systemic Racism, Affirmative Action, and Disproportionate Minority Contact,” 120 Mich. L. Rev. 451 (2021).
2021
Kara W. Swanson
Northeastern University
“Race and Selective Legal Memory: Reflections on Invention of a Slave”
Honorable Mention
I. India Thusi
Delaware Law School
“On Beauty and Policing,” 114 Northwestern University L.Rev. 1335 (2020)
Honorable Mention
Deborah N. Archer
NYU School of Law
“White Men’s Roads through Black Men’s Homes: Advancing Racial Equity through Highway Construction” 73 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 1259 (2020)
2020
Bernadette Atuahene
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Bernadette Atuahene. "Predatory Cities" California Law Review Vol. 108 Iss. 1 (2020) p. 107 - 182 ISSN: 0008-1221 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bernadette_atuahene/52/
Honorable Mention
Michele Goodwin
University of California-Irvine
“The Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery, Capitalism, and Mass Incarceration” 104 Cornell Law Review 899 (2019)
Honorable Mention
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
University of Denver Sturm
“Deconstructing Crimmigration” 52 UC Davis Law Review 197 (2018-2019)
2019
Kimani Paul-Emile
Fordham University School of Law
Blackness as Disability?
2018
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
University of California at Berkeley
Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Tragedy of Being ‘Out of Place’ from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin
2017
Matthew Clair and Alix S.Winter
Harvard University
How Judges Think About Racial Disparities: Situational Decision-Making in the Criminal Justice System Criminology 54 (2):332-359 Nominated by Lawrence D. Bobo, Harvard University
2016
Len Albright, Douglas S. Massey, Jacob S. Rugh
Northeastern University, Princeton University, Brigham Young University
Race, Space, and Cumulative Disadvantage: A Case Study of the Subprime Lending Collapse May 2015 issue of Social Problems (Volume 62, Issue 2, Pages 186-218)
2015
D. Wendy Greene
Samford University-Cumberland School of Law
Categorically Black, White, or Wrong: ‘Misperception Discrimination’ and the State of Title VII Protection, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 2013
2014
Matthew Desmond
Sociology and Social Studies, Harvard University
Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty American Journal of Sociology 118 (2012): 88-133
2013
Ada Ferrer
New York University
Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic 117 American Historical Review 40 (2012)
2012
Elise C. Boddie
"Racial Territoriality"” 58 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 401 (2010)
2011
Osagie K. Obasogie
In “Do Blind People See Race? Social, Legal and Theoretical Considerations,” 44 L. & SOC. REV. 585 (2010)

Nominations Require:

  • Nominators must be current LSA members.
  • Article copies submitted to the committee must be in English.
  • The article must have a publication date within the two calendar years prior to the awards ceremony. Articles will be considered only once during the two-year period of eligibility.
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • The full article, including full bibliographic citation.
  • OPTIONAL – A letter of support from the nominator, including an abstract of the article.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

Dissertation Prize

The LSA Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to a dissertation written within 12 months of the prize year that best represents outstanding law and society scholarship.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Dylan Farrell-Bryan – University of  Pennsylvania

The winning dissertation, Bureaucracies of Removal: The Labor and Logics of US Immigration Courts, authored by Dylan Farrell-Bryan of the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School, is an efficient, effective tour de force of socio-legal research that demonstrates her capacity to dramatically advance the field, both methodologically and substantively.

Dr. Farrell-Bryan’s dissertation begins with an unstated assumption: that in order to capture a complete picture of a dispute-resolution institution, it is necessary to talk to all the actors involved. This conundrum, which has bedeviled research on legal institutions since Martin Shapiro first developed the decision-making triad in Courts, is the hidden genius of Dr. Farrell-Bryan’s work. Through over 100 interviews, she developed an understanding of the American immigration system through the eyes of all three legs of the triad. In three well-crafted papers, she paints three different pictures of the immigration system: one through the eyes of lawyers representing immigrants, one through the eyes of lawyers representing the government, and one through the eyes of immigration judges.

In discussing the system as seen by immigration lawyers, Dr. Farrell-Bryan develops the role of time in affecting participants’ views. She demonstrates that “time” as a concept is neutral – sometimes creating opportunities, sometimes creating difficulties. But she demonstrates that the use of time is deeply reflective of the values that infuse the immigration system – whether the government’s values or those of immigrants, time can be determinative of outcomes in a variety of ways. Time is a cutting-edge frontier in socio-legal research, and the committee in particular noted Dr. Farrell-Bryan’s development of this theme throughout this paper.

In her paper on judges, Dr. Farrell-Bryan developed a new concept related to the ways that street-level bureaucrats can both be controlled through central management and can resist that control through their own actions. This paper, drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with immigration judges, advances our understanding of the ways in which judges form part of the administrative state and yet are also separated from it. The committee also remarked on the careful explication of the research here that provided key evidence for the major theoretical innovations.

The committee notes that Dr. Farrell-Bryan’s dissertation also included a third paper drawing on interviews of government attorneys in the immigration system – specifically, attorneys who represent the Department of Homeland Security. Our lack of specific praise for this paper should not be interpreted as condemnation; while it is an outstanding piece of standard socio-legal research and thus supports the award of the prize, the committee did not regard it as field-changing in the way that the other papers were. At the risk of sounding flip, this paper was merely an excellent piece of research that should be widely read and cited.

Honorable Mention

Erdem Demirtaş – Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey

The committee also awarded an honorable mention to Abdullah Erdem Demirtaş of Boğaziçi University for his dissertation, Constitutional Courts During Political Upheavals: The Case of the Turkish Constitutional Court. This dissertation draws on several dozen interviews of sitting and retired Turkish judges and significant media content analysis to trace out a multi-decade story of an institution that is both a bulwark and a barrier of democracy in Turkey. Dr. Demirtaş in particular is to be commended for successfully completing interviews of judges who have contested the Erdogan regime’s movements toward authoritarianism and who could have been punished for speaking frankly with him. If nothing else, this research represents the highest standards of ethical conduct in the investigation of an important question and deserves to be read and cited for at least this.

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Paper
2023
Dylan Farrell-Bryan
University of Pennsylvania
"Bureaucracies of Removal: The Labor and Logics of US Immigration Courts"
Honorable Mention
Erdem Demirtaş
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
"Constitutional Courts During Political Upheavals: The Case of the Turkish Constitutional Court"
2022
Stephen Schaaf
University of Mississippi
"Litigating the Authoritarian State: Legal Mobilization and Judicial Politics in the Middle East”
2021
Tobias Smith
University of California-Berkeley
“The Contradictions of Chinese Capital Punishment”
Edward van Daalen
University of Genève
“Decolonizing the Global Child Labor Regime: The ILO, Trade Unions, and Organized Working Children”
2020
Emily Prifogle
University of Michigan
“Cows, Cars, and Criminals: The Legal Landscape of the Rural Midwest, 1920-1975”
Tommaso Pavone
PluriCourts Centre at the University of Oslo
“The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe”
Honorable Mention
Michael Gibson-Light
University of Denver
“The Prison as Market: How Penal Labor Systems Reproduce Inequality”
2019
Egor Lazarev
University of Toronto
Laws in Conflict: Legacies of War and Legal Pluralism in Chechnya Honorable Mention
Honorable Mention
Viviane Weitzner
McGill University
Raw Economy/Raw Law: Ancestral Peoples, Mining, Law and Violence in Colombia
2018
Amanda Hughett
Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, SUNY-Buffalo
Silencing the Cell Block: The Making of Modern Prison Policy in North Carolina and the Nation
2017
Sarah Seo
Princeton University
The Fourth Amendment, Cars, and Freedom in Twentieth Century America
2016
Sandra Botero Cabrera
University of Notre Dame
Courts that Matter: Judges, Litigants and the Politics of Rights Enforcement in Latin America
2015
Gwendolyn Leachman
University of Wisconsin
Institutions and Dominance within Social Movements: How Legal Strategies Shape the Agendas of Movements for Social Change, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley
2014
Hillary Berk
Jurisprudence and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley
The Legalization of Emotion: Risk, Gender, and the Management of Feeling in Contracts for Surrogate Labor
Rohit De
Department of History, Princeton University
The Republic of Writs: Litigious Citizens, Constitutional Law, and Everyday Life in India (1947-1964)
2013
Benjamin Schonthal
Ruling Religion: Buddhism, Politics and Law in Contemporary Sri Lanka University of Chicago
2012
John W. Compton
A Moral Revolution: Evangelical Reform and the Transformation of American Constitutionalism, 1830‐1937, University of California at Los Angeles
2011
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti
Governing Sexualities: Globalization, Biopower, And Citizenship in Postcolonial India, University of Wisconsin, Madison
2010
Heather Schoenfeld
The Politics of Prison Growth: From Chain Gangs to Work Release Centers and Supermax Prisons, Florida, 1955-2000, Northwestern University
2009
Ceren Belge
Whose Law?: Clans, Honor Killings, and State-Minority Relations in Turkey and Israel, University of Washington Who Rules the Law?
Mark Fathi Massoud
How Government, Civil Society, and Aid Agencies Manipulate Law in Sudan, University of California, Berkeley
2008
Manuel A. Gómez
All in the Family: The Influence of Social Networks on Dispute Processing, Stanford University
2007
Sandra R. Levitsky
Private Dilemmas of Public Provision: The Formation of Political Demand for State Entitlements to Long-Term Care, University of Wisconsin
2006
Naomi Murakawa
Electing to Punish: Congress, Race, and the American Criminal Justice State, Yale University
2005
Margot Canaday
The Straight State: Sexuality and American Citizenship, 1900 1969, University of Minnesota
2004
Risa L. Goluboff
The Work of Civil Rights in the 1940s: The Department of Justice, the NAACP, and African American Agricultural Labor, Princeton University
2003
Katharina Heyer
Rights on the Road: Disability Politics in Japan and Germany, University of Hawaii
Barbara Oomen
Chiefs! Law, Power and Culture in Contemporary South Africa, University of Leiden
2002
Catherine Ruth Albiston
The Institutional Context of Civil Rights: Mobilizing the Family and Medical Leave Act in the Courts and in the Workplace, University of California, Berkeley
2001
Sara Manaugh
Without Reason: Drug War Politics in the United States, University of California, Berkeley
2000
Laura Beth Nielson
License to Harass: Offensive Speech, Legal Consciousness, and Hierarchies of Race, Gender, and Class, University of California, Berkeley
1999
Beth Kiyoko Jamieson
Toward a Feminist Theory of Liberty, Rutgers University

Nominations Require:

  • Nominators must be current LSA members
  • The dissertation must have been filed with the institution of higher education (U.S or non-U.S) during the calendar year prior to the award ceremony.
  • The full dissertation in English; translations from other languages into English are welcome.
  • An abstract of the dissertation, also in English.
  • OPTIONAL – One letter of nomination from a regular member of the Law and Society Association.
  • No self-nominations or student-member nominations are accepted.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

Graduate Student Paper Prize

The LSA Graduate Student Paper Prizes are awarded annually to a graduate student whose nominated papers, written within 18 months of the prize year, best represent outstanding law and society research.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Charlotte Rosen – Northwestern University

Charlotte Rosen is a PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University. Her dissertation chapter, “Harris v. Philadelphia and the Dilemma of Mass Imprisonment in Law and Order Philadelphia, 1986-2000,” offers a fine-grained analysis of a prisoner lawsuit challenging the conditions in Philadelphia jails (which are referred to as ‘prisons’ in Philadelphia) and the ensuing court battles to limit pre-trial detention to reduce overcrowding. Combining archival research (including access to closed papers) and analysis of contemporaneous media coverage of controversies surrounding pre-trial release, the paper contributes to historiographies of penal policy by shifting the analysis from national politics to the county and municipal levels in order to trace local resistance to punitive crime control agendas in the 1980s and 1990s. While limits to pre-trial detention were temporary and ultimately failed, the paper reconstructs this historical case to argue that mass incarceration was not inevitable, nor did it go unchallenged during the period when incarceration rates began to skyrocket in the United States.  

Victoria Piehowski – University of Minnesota

Victoria Piehowski is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation chapter, “’We Broke ‘em, We Fix ‘em:’ Trauma Discourse, Veterans Treatment Courts, and the Politics of Crime,” chronicles the establishment of the first Veterans Treatment Courts in Minnesota. Combining interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the paper traces how advocates of Veterans Treatment Courts mobilized medical discourses about trauma to assert a purportedly causal link between trauma experienced during military service and subsequent criminal behavior – referred to as the “direct nexus” between trauma and crime. Bringing together interdisciplinary literature in science and technology sciences and sociolegal studies, the paper demonstrates that, in spite of a lack of consensus in the medical literature as to whether or not a causal link between trauma and violent crime in fact exists, advocates discursively linked the two in order to justify psychiatric treatment as a viable alternative to incarceration for former military convicted of serious crimes, including violent crime. The paper argues that this purportedly causal link helped to facilitate the creation of a new institutional venue – the Veterans Treatment Court – at this interface between clinical medicine and criminal law. The paper further argues that these exceptions for veterans have had the effect of shoring up punitive approaches to crime for most criminal defendants through a selective rendering of only some experiences of trauma – i.e., trauma experienced during military service – as sympathetic and meriting treatment instead of punishment. 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Paper
2023
Charlotte Rosen
Northwestern University
“Harris v. Philadelphia and the Dilemma of Mass Imprisonment in Law and Order Philadelphia, 1986-2000”
Victoria Piehowski
University of Minnesota
“ 'We Broke ‘em, We Fix ‘em:' Trauma Discourse, Veterans Treatment Courts, and the Politics of Crime”
2021
Nafay Choudhury
Harvard Law School & University of Cambridge
“Order in the Bazaar: The Transformation of Nonstate Law in Afghanistan’s Premier Money Exchange Market”
2020
Tony Cheng
Yale University
“Social Media and Shaping the Social Memory of Police (Mis)Conduct"
2019
Stefan Vogler
University of California, Irvine
Constituting the ‘Sexually Violent Predator’: Law, Forensic Psychology, and the Adjudication of Risk
2018
Ayobami Laniyonu
UCLA
Coffee Shops and Street Stops: Policing Practices in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
2017
Erin Adam
University of Washington
Intersectional Coalitions: The Paradoxes of Rights-Based Movement Building in LGBTQ and Immigrant Communities
2016
Ayako Hirata
Kyoto University
Regulation In-Between: How Does Inter-Office Interaction Matter for Street-Level Regulatory Enforcement?
2015
Hassan El Menyawi
New York University
The Great Reversal
2014
Issa Kohler-Hausmann
New York University
Misdemeanor Justice: Control without Conviction
2013
Amy Myrick
Northwestern University
Facing Your Criminal Record: Expungement and the Collateral Problem of Wrongfully Represented Self
2012
Ben Grunwald
University of Pennsylvania
Questioning Blackmun's Thesis: Does Uniformity in Sentencing Entail Unfairness?
2011
Shauhin A. Talesh
University of California, Berkeley
How Organizations Shape the Meaning of Law: A Comparative Analysis of Dispute Resolution Structures and Consumer Lemon Laws
2010
Ashley T. Rubin
University of California, Berkeley
Race, Ethnicity, and Nativity at Eastern State Penitentiary: A Study of the Variation in Sentence Length, 1829-1871
2009
Gwendolyn Leachman
University of California, Berkeley
Who Frames the Message? Counter Movements and Public Perception of Social Movements' Legal Agendas
2008
Mark Fathi Massoud
University of California, Berkeley
Myth‑making and the Collision of Rights in Sudan
2007
Philip Goodman
University of California, Irvine
It's Just Black, White or Hispanic": An Ethno- graphic Examination of Racializing Moves in California's Segregated Prison Reception Centers
2006
Ariel Meyerstein
University of California, Berkeley
Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality
Scott Leon
Washington Princeton University
The Killing Fields Revisited: Lynching and Anti- Miscegenation Legislation in the Jim Crow South, 1882-1930
2005
Daniel LaChance
University of Minnesota
Last Words, Last Meals, and Last Stands: The Illusion of Agency in the Modern Execution Process
2004
Bruce Michael Price
New York University
How Green Was My Valley? An Examination of Tournament Theory as a Governance Mechanism in Silicon Valley Law Firms
2003
Vanessa Barker
New York University
The Politics of Punishing: How the Routine Activities of Governance Impact Reliance on Confinement
2002
Aaron Kupchik
New York University
Making Some Noise: Degradation as Tension Reduction for the Criminal Court Prosecution of Adolescents
2001
Brian Glenn
University of Connecticut
The Shifting Rhetoric of Insurance Denial
2000
John Krinsky
Columbia University
Organizing Stories: Counter-hegemony, Legal Advocacy, and Anti-Workforce Activism in New York City
1999
Michele Landis
Northwestern University
Fate,Responsibility, and "Natural" Disaster Relief: Narrating the American Welfare State
1998
Liliana Suarez-Navaz
Stanford University
The Symbolic and Political Manufacturing of the Legitimation of Legality
Laura Beth Nielsen
University of California, Berkeley
Paying Workers or Paying Lawyers: Employee Termination Practices in the United States and Canada
1997
David T. Johnson
University of California, Berkeley
The Organization of Prosecution and the Possibility of Order
1996
Susan S. Gooding
University of Chicago
Race,Place and Names: Layered Identities in United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor
1995
Cynthia R. Poe
University of Wisconsin
Those Wondrous Structures Found: The Antiquities Act of 1906 and Federal Indian Policy
1994
Paul J. Neiberg
University of California, Berkeley
Endangered Species Protection in the United States and Canada: A Comparison of Policy Styles
1993
Avi Tannenbaum
University of Maryland
Deadly Force: The Influence of a Supreme Court Decision on Police Behavior
1992
Michele DeMary
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The New Federalism in Massachusetts
1991
John Gilliom
University of Washington
Rights and Discipline: competing Modes of Social Control in the Fight over Drug Testing
1990
Rebecca Eisner uth Zimmerman
University of Michigan
Individual Entitlement to the Financial Benefits of a Professional Degree
Tom Durkin
University of Chicago
The Meaning of Propensity to Sue Rates
1989
Kevin Delaney
SUNY Stony Brook
Power, Intercorporate Networks and ‘Strategic Bankruptcy’
Jennifer Jackman
Brandeis University
The Emergence and Subversion of Comparable Worth in the 1940's: A Study of the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act

Nominations Require:

  • Only non-student members of the Law and Society Association may make nominations for the Graduate Student Award. No self-nominations are accepted.
  • The paper must have been submitted within the two calendar years prior to the awards ceremony by a matriculated graduate or graduate professional student at any U.S. or non-U.S. institution of higher education. Papers originally written for coursework within this same time period and subsequently published are still eligible for nomination. Papers are only considered once within the two-year period of eligibility.
  • No instructor may nominate more than two student papers for the award.
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • In submitting the paper for award consideration, the nominator must include the date and title of the course for which the paper was written.
  • Submissions must be in English; translations from other languages into English are welcome.
  • The paper must be double-spaced; may not exceed 18,000 words in length, including notes and references; and must be in a minimum of 12 point font.
  • OPTIONAL – Nominators can include a letter of support describing the merits of the student paper they are submitting.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

Undergraduate Student Paper Prize

The LSA Undergraduate Student Paper Prizes are awarded annually to an undergraduate student whose nominated papers, written within 18 months of the prize year, best represent outstanding law and society research.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winner

Shealyn Massey
University of California, Berkeley

The Law and Society Association’s Undergraduate Student Paper Prize goes to Shealyn Massey for their paper, “The Legal Consciousness and Legal Mobilization of Queer Asian Pacific Islanders,” and was nominated by Catherine Albiston. 

The paper, which is Ms. Massey’s Honors Thesis, was nominated by Professor Catherine Albiston, reports findings from an original research project examining how individuals whose intersectional identities as queer and Asian Pacific Islander complicate the ways individuals navigate the law across and within multiple communities. The project investigates the powerful influence of culture and community in perceptions of and engagement with the law, as respondents navigated multiple identities, stereotypes and discrimination in both queer and Asian communities. Ms. Massey’s empirical research and theoretically rich analysis of queer respondents’ distrust and ambivalence regarding the law is an important contribution to understanding how and why existing anti-discrimination approaches fail to capture intersectional forms of discrimination and exclusion. The paper represents an excellent contribution to studies of legal consciousness and legal mobilization in the Law and Society tradition. 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
Paper
2023
Shealyn Massey
University of California, Berkeley
“The Legal Consciousness and Legal Mobilization of Queer Asian Pacific Islanders"
2022
Abbey Hackelman
Purdue University
“Functional Confinement"
2021
Raika Kim
University of California-Berkeley
“The Ability to Work: Perspectives of Workers with Disabilities”
2020
Anthony Carrasco
University of California-Berkeley
“Unconscionability, Vulnerability, and Other Sociopolitical Constructions of the Judicial Imagination”
2019
Catherine Mansur
Northwestern University
All Bets Are off in the Climate Casino: Federalism and U.S. Power Sector Greenhouse Gas Regulation
Honorable Mention
Haley Glazer
Northwestern University
Demographic and Case-Related Factors Affecting Quantity of News Media Coverage in Texas Death Penalty Cases: An Exploration
2018
J. Y. Chua
Yale College
The Strange Career of Gross Indecency: Racial Anxiety and Sexual Politics in Pre-World War II Singapore
Honorable Mention
Melissa Barragan
University of California, Irvine
Guns and Injustice: Examining Gun Offender Perceptions of Gun Law and Gun Policing in Los Angeles
2017
Mitchell Santos Toledo
University of California, Berkeley
Liminal Legality and Legal Consciousness: Undocumented Student Responses to DACA
2016
Allison Cano
Simon Fraser University
A Matter of Personal Status: Women’s Legal Rights and the Making of Family Law in Post-2003 Iraq
2015
Matthew Mitchell
University of Melbourne
Producing Black Collar Crime Through Discourse: The Changing Relationship Between State Law and the Catholic Church
2014
Alison Gocke
Princeton University
Visions of the Land: Cartography and Environmental Philosophy in the Old Northwest
2013
Carter Greenbaum
Princeton University
Stories to Monies: Sociological Perspectives on the Meaning of Money In International Commercial Mediation
2012
Chase S. Burton
University of California, Berkeley
Spare the Cell, Spoil the Child: Early History and Philosophy of American Juvenile Justice
2011
Kory Redding
University of North Texas
When the Chief Dissents: Examining the Institutional Consequences of Administrative Responsibilities, 1946-2008
2010
Erin Mitchell
Drake University
Dangerous, Dirty and Disgusting: An Exploration of the American Narrative of Birth
2009
Clare F. Ryan
Macalester College
Confronting Childhood: Courts and the Contradictions of Juvenile Justice
2008
Patricia Bass
Macalester College
Regulating the ‘Social Mix:’ How and Why Do France and the U.S. Desegregate Housing
2007
Rebecca Sheff
Macalester College
Strategic Choices in Diverse Contexts: The Maasai Indigenous Rights Movement
2006
Ian Richardson
University of California, Berkeley
From Institutional Change to Customer Service: The Development of the Practical Meaning of Title VI
2005
Rachel Lynn, Ballard McCracken
Amherst College
Inside Out and Upside Down in Indian Country: Law's Colonization of the Native Nations
2004
John Graham Kimble
Princeton University
Insuring Inequality: The Role of the Federal Housing Administration in the Urban Ghettoization of African-Americans
2003
Yen P. Nguyen
University of California, Santa Barbara
Creating Computer Crimes Unites to Take a Byte Out of Computer Crime
2002
Matthew Cannon
University of Michigan
Kulturkampf and the Courts: The Relationship between Judicial Pronouncements on and Cultural Impressions of Gay Rights in America, From Bowers to Baker
2001
Rachael Burson
Amherst College
A Tale of Voice, Justice, and Power: Reading the Representation of Legal Storytelling in "The Accused"
2000
Shushanie Isaacson
University of Minnesota
Diffusion of Sex Offender Registration Laws and Public Access Provisions Therein Across Fifty American States
1999
Emily Samantha Glasgow
Amherst College
Taking Children Seriously: Reconceiving Childhood, Imagining Rights, and Respecting the Voice of Youth
1998
Vicki J. Running
Wellesley College
Political Rights and Goals: Ananlying the Consituttional Challenges and Policy Considerations Facing Megan’s Law, the Community Notification Provision Regarding Released Sex Offenders
1997
Clifford J. Rosky
Amherst College
A View to a Kill: Democracy, Television, and Capital Punishment
1996
Alexa Klimas
Princeton University
Why Did We Believe the Children?: A Closer Look at Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Day Care Centers in the 1980's
1995
Clare Melissa Gilbert
Vassar College
Pornography v. the First Amendment
1994
Elizabeth A. Myrick
Bates College
What’s Rights Got to Do With It?: Intimate Violence and the Potential of Postmodern Rights Theory
1992
Marilyn Brown
Wellesley College
The Meanings of Intoxication: Alcohol, Power and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii
1991
John White
Santa Clara University
Styles of Mediation and Society: An Analysis of a ‘Hybrid’ Approach to Mediation
1989
Timothy Pohl
Amherst College
The Right to Health Care: Moral Arguments and Legal Recognition
Sagariki Molly Chaudhuri
Yale University
The Efficacy of the Temporary Restraining Order from the Victim’s Perspective

Nominations Require:

  • Only regular LSA members and graduate student LSA members who have received the nominated papers while working as lecturers or teaching assistants may nominate papers for the Undergraduate Student Award. No self-nominations are accepted.
  • No instructor may nominate more than two student papers for the award.
  • Only one single-authored work by the same author in a given year will be accepted. Two works by the same author will be accepted if one or both works are jointly authored.
  • The paper must have been submitted within the two calendar years prior to the awards ceremony by a matriculated undergraduate student at any U.S. or non-U.S. institution of higher education including two-year community colleges. Papers originally written for a class within this same time period and subsequently published are still eligible. Papers are only considered once within the two-year period of eligibility.
  • In submitting the paper for award consideration, the nominator must include the date and title of the course for which the paper was written.
  • Submissions must be in English; translations from other languages into English are welcome.
  • The paper must be double-spaced; may not exceed 18,000 words in length, including notes and references; and must be in a minimum of 12 point font.
  • OPTIONAL – Nominators can include a letter of support describing the merits of the student paper they are submitting.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

PRIZE

International Prize

The Law and Society Association International Prize is awarded annually to a scholar, normally resident outside the United States, in recognition of scholarship that has contributed significantly to the advancement of knowledge in the field of law and society. It is not a book prize, but is instead given in recognition of a body of scholarly work.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winners

Sharyn Roach Anleu – Flinders University of South Australia

The committee is pleased to present the International Prize award to Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu. The committee was extremely impressed by Professor Roach Anleu’s significant publication record in multiple fields as well as her dedication to the advancement of knowledge through enthusiastic and unwavering service work. One nominator described Professor Roach Anleu’s scholarly contributions in the field of law and society as follows: “Over her career, [Prof. Roach Anleu’s] body of scholarly work focuses on two broad streams: legal professions, especially the recruitment, advancement, and experience of women; and the interaction between law and other modes of behavioral regulation (for example, regulation of emotion)…. Among [her] outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the field of law and society is her innovative application of key sociological concepts, such as emotional labor, job satisfaction, professionalization, gender and work/family conflict to a population – the judiciary – that has not previously been studied as a profession or as a workplace.”  

Professor Roach Anleu has published 6 books, 45 book chapters, 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals (plus translation of articles into Portuguese, Russian and Spanish) and 20 reports to courts and their judicial officers. She has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in the areas of the regulation of deviance, the legal regulation of surrogacy and reproductive technology, the intersection of law and emotion, and literature and humor studies. As one nominator wrote with respect to her work on judging and emotion, Professor Roach Anleu’s “extensive empirical evidence on the judiciary… [demonstrates] broad implications… for foundational legal (and sociological) concepts such as impartiality/objectivity and legitimacy…. Sharyn’s work makes clear that judges are human, that their behavior can be fruitfully studied, and that the fruits of these studies have important implications for judicial behavior and legal processes more generally.” With respect to this area of her work, another nominator wrote that her research “has had real world impact in that the judiciary has taken note of her work, acted on it, and encouraged her to undertake more. Her work indeed defines the field.”  

In addition to her scholarship and publishing, Professor Roach Anleu has been, as one nominator put it “unstinting in her service role to the community.” She has “an ever-present willingness to organize panels, conferences and events that help showcase the work of others and forge connections among international scholars.” As another nominator wrote, Professor Roach Anleu “is a generous, collegial and collaborative scholar who has been instrumental in forging international linkages that advance socio-legal scholarship and foster knowledge.” She is an active member of the International Sociological Association, Research Committee for the Sociology of Law and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is currently a co-convenor of the Law and Society Association CRN on Law and Emotion, and regularly teaches at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law. Prof. Roach Anleu is a scholar who has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in the field of law and society not just through her own research work but also by helping to support, educate and mentor the next generation of scholars. 

Honorable Mention

Jane McAdam – UNSW Law

The International Prize Committee would also like to give honorable mention to Professor Jane McAdam. Professor McAdam is a leading scholar in the area of refugee law and climate change who has made significant contributions to the understanding of climate-change related forced migration. As one nominator wrote, Her work conceptualised the phenomenon of ‘climate change-related displacement’ in international law for the first time, resulting in new theoretical and practical approaches to the subject.” Another nominator wrote, “using an interdisciplinary approach combining field research, archival studies, and legal analysis [Professor McAdam] has contributed in innovative ways to the understanding of the complex interrelationships between society and law in the area of human mobility. This is particularly true for her pioneering and ground-breaking work on the different forms of human mobility in the context of disasters and adverse effects of climate changeHer books and articles on this issue have not only received highest praise and wide-spread recognition but have virtually set the foundation for a new and broad field of research today and the years to come.” 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
2023
Sharyn Roach Anleu
Flinders University of South Australia
Honorable Mention
Jane McAdam
UNSW Law
2022
Nicola Lacey
London School of Economics
2021
Rachel Sieder
Centre for Research and Advanced Study in Social Anthropology
2020
Ulrike Schultz
Fernuniversität in Hagen
Honorable Mention
Stefan Machura
Bangor University
2019
Kelly Hannah-Moffat
University of Toronto
2018
Fiona Haines
University of Melbourne
2017
John Braithwaite
Australian National University
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
Hebrew University
2016
Susanne Karstedt
Griffith University
2015
Ronen Shamir
Tel Aviv University
2014
Setsuo Miyazawa
Aoyama Gakuin University Law School
2013
David Nelken
University of Macerata and University of Wales, Cardiff
2012
Upendra Baxi
2009
Yves Dezelay
2007
Xingliang Chen
Dario Melossi
2005
Hazel Genn
2003
Masaji Chiba
2001
Neelan Tiruchelvam (posthumously)

Nominations Require:

  • Normally offered to a scholar in residence outside the United States
  • A letter of support from the nominator
  • The candidate’s curriculum vitae
  • 1 or 2 additional letters of support will be accepted, but are not required.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

AWARD

Stan Wheeler Mentorship

The Stan Wheeler Mentorship is given each year to a member of the Law and Society community who is regarded by their peers and students as an outstanding mentor for graduate, professional, or undergraduate students working on issues of law and society. Self-nominations are accepted.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winner

Angela Onwuachi-Willig – Boston University School of Law

We are extremely pleased to extend the Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award for 2023 to Professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig.  Professor Onwuachi-Willig received her JD degree from University of Michigan Law School and a PhD in Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University.  She has held prestigious positions as Charles and Marion Kierscht Professor at University of Iowa College of Law and as Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. Presently she is Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law and Dean at Boston University School of Law. She has served on the Board and Executive Committee of LSA. Her research and teaching interests focus on employment discrimination, Critical Race Theory, family law, and related subjects.  

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the ALI,  Professor Onwuachi-Willig is a prolific researcher who has published several books and scores of articles in top sociolegal journals and law reviews.  She has been an intellectual leader in many areas, including promoting empirical study of race.  She has won numerous awards for this influential work, including both an honorable mention and winner prize for the Law and Society Association John Hope Franklin Award.  She also is a widely recognized institutional leader, in many dimensions, including not least her current position as law school Dean.  We are extremely impressed by her meritorious, highly influential work at many levels.  

But it is her contribution as a mentor and teacher that we appropriately highlight here.  Angela has received many awards for her teaching and mentoring of a great many younger scholars of color.  These awards include the AALS Clyde Ferguson Award, for her public service, teaching, and scholarship as well as support, encouragement, and mentoring to colleagues, students, and aspiring legal educators. She also won the Derrick A. Bell AALS Minority Groups Section Award, given to a junior faculty member who, through activism, mentoring, teaching and scholarship, has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice.  Angela is the only person to have won both awards. 

These awards recognize that Professor Onwuachi-Willig is a splendid, highly accomplished teacher and mentor.  But it was the testimonies from her mentees and colleagues in nominating letters that bought to life what those accomplishments have meant in practice.  On the one hand, the letters make clear what a hugely positive personal, direct impact that Angela has made on scores of individual scholars.  A half dozen nominating letters, some by multiple nominators, testified about Onwuachi-Willig’s extraordinary influence on young scholars at every point of their careers, including: research conceptualization; first drafts of papers; advice about tweaking those papers and submitting for publication; pointers about applying for academic jobs; thoughts about teaching a variety of topics; and yet more pointers about every stage of academic advancement.   The letters repeat over and over that Angela was a “constant source of support” over the long haul of academic careers – in particular for many, many scholars of color. As one nominating letter states, “for more than twenty years, Dean Onwuachi-Willig has shared her time, resources, social networks, expertise, and understanding of the unwritten rules with those with the least privilege and access.”  The letters bear clear and powerful witness to how Angela has shaped lives and inspired commitments as well as guided professional careers.  

Professor Onwuachi-Willig’s influence has been manifest in a host of institutionalized as well as individual and personal ways.  Perhaps most important is her role as founder and subsequent host and organizer of the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Workshop (2007-present).  This ongoing project has assisted dozens of women on the path to jobs and tenure.,.  Again, numerous nominating letters underline the enormous contribution of this workshop to mentoring young scholars of color at all phases of their career development.  Angela also has worked since 2017 as co-founder and co-chair of the Equality Law Scholars Forum, providing yet another source of collegial support and mentoring for countless scholars.  As Dean at Boston University Law School, Dean Onwuachi-Willig and the Center for Antiracist Research launched the ASPIRE cohort to educate and train future antiracist lawyers. Under this program, eight students committed to performing antiracist work will be admitted to BU with full tuition.  The cumulative impact of all this institutional work to provide mentoring to countless scholars in legal academic has been, as one letter put it, “staggering.”  

In sum, we on the prize committee fully concur that Professor Onwuachi-Willig represents the extraordinary commitments to and practices of mentoring that the Wheeler award recognizes.  

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
2023
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Boston University School of Law
2022
Calvin Morrill
University of California, Berkeley
Elizabeth Mertz
University of Wisconsin & American Bar Foundation
2021
Setsuo Miyazawa
UC Hastings Law
2020
Dee Smythe and Kelley Moult
University of Cape Town
2019
Renée Ann Cramer
Drake University
2018
Robert Gordon
Stanford University
Laura Beth Nielsen
American Bar Foundation/Northwestern U
2017
Lauren Edelman
University of California, Berkeley
Michael McCann
University of Washington
2016
Mona Lynch
University of California, Irvine
2015
Susan Silbey
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2014
Jacques Commaille
Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan
2013
Lawrence M. Friedman
Stanford University
2012
Valerie Hans
2011
Kiyoshi Ikeda
2010
Howard S. Erlanger
2009
Robert A. Kagan, Austin Sarat

Nominations Require:

  • A letter of support from the nominator, describing the nominee’s mentoring skills and his/her record as a “member of the Law and Society community”.
  • The candidate’s curriculum vitae.
  • 2 – 4 additional letters of support from former students, colleagues, collaborators, or others who have experienced the nominee’s skills as a mentor.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

AWARD

Ronald Pipkin Service Award

The Ronald Pipkin Service Award is awarded to the Law and Society Association member who has demonstrated sustained and extraordinary service to the Association. Forms of service that will be awarded should be independent of elected office and appointed roles, although those roles can be considered as part of a larger record.

The award carries a cash prize of $500.

Current Winner

Heinz Klug – University of Wisconsin

It is with great pleasure that we present the Pipkin Prize to Heinz Klug in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of law and society. Professor Klug’s unwavering commitment and dedication to the Law and Society Association (LSA) have been exemplary and truly inspiring. He has served LSA in various capacities for many years, and his efforts have helped advance the Association’s mission and vision. 

As a member of the Board of Trustees, Professor Klug has provided valuable guidance and leadership to LSA. He has also made significant contributions as the Co-Chair and member of the Program Committee for several LSA annual meetings, including the recent 2019 meeting in Washington DC and the 2016 meeting in New Orleans. His contributions to the success of these meetings are immeasurable. 

Professor Klug has also served as the Chair and Co-Chair of various LSA committees, including the International Activities Committee from 2009-2012. He has been an active member of several other committees, including the 50th Anniversary Committee and the International Activities Committee. 

As a faculty member, Professor Klug has been involved in various LSA workshops, including the Early Career Workshop, Graduate Workshop, and Summer Institute. His expertise and willingness to help aspiring scholars have been invaluable to the LSA community. 

Throughout his years of service to LSA, Professor Klug has exhibited a remarkable spirit of collaboration and dedication. His contributions have been invaluable to the Association and have helped shape the field of law and society. He is truly deserving of the Pipkin Prize, and we congratulate him on this well-deserved honor. 

Past Winners

Year
Individual(s)
Affiliation
2023
Heinz Klug
University of Wisconsin
2022
Annie Bunting
York University
Javier A Couso
Universidad Diego Portales & Utrecht University
2021
Nancy Reichman
University of Denver
2020
Kim Lane Scheppele
Princeton University
Howard Erlanger
University of Wisconsin
2019
David Trubek
University of Wisconsin Madison
2018
Susan M. Olson
University of Utah
2017
Doris Marie Provine
Arizona State University
2016
Shari Diamond
Northwestern University and American Bar Foundation
2015
Bert Kritzer
University of Minnesota
2014
Austin Sarat
Amherst College
Samuel Krislov
University of Minnesota
2013
Richard D. “Red” Schwartz
Yale University and Syracuse University
2012
Lissa Ganter

Nominations Require:

  • Nominees must be current members of the Law and Society Association, however, nominators are not required to be members.
  • A letter of support describing the nominee’s demonstrated, sustained and extraordinary service to the Association.
  • 1 or 2 additional letters of support will be accepted, but are not required.

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

AWARD

Legacy Award

The LSA Legacy Award honors people whose contributions significantly helped to develop the Association through sustained commitment to the Association’s mission and legacy, extensive service, or scholarly publications that made a lasting contribution to the Association.

Current membership in the Association is not necessary.
Click here for the 2022 Awards Announcements

Current Winners (from 2021)

Rosann Greenspan
University of California-Berkeley

Rosann Greenspan is the former executive director of Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society, with which she was affiliated for 20 years until her retirement in 2019. She has also held positions as research officer at the Law Reform Commission of Canada, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, US Supreme Court fellow, research director at the Police Foundation in Washington, DC, and lecturer in Legal Studies at U.C. Berkeley, inter alia. Her most recent publication is the edited volume, The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice: Studies Inspired by the Work of Malcolm Feeley, edited by Rosann Greenspan, Hadar Aviram and Jonathan Simon (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Dr. Greenspan graduated with her B.A. magna cum laude in Yale University’s first class of undergraduate women. She earned an M.A. from the Centre for Criminology at the University of Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program in U.C. Berkeley School of Law. Besides Ontario, where she returns regularly, she has also lived in Quebec and British Columbia, and briefly in the Yukon.

Mari Matsuda
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

From her earliest academic publications, Professor Matsuda has spoken from the perspective and increasingly used the method that has come to be known as critical race theory. She is not only one of its most powerful practitioners, but is among a handful of legal scholars credited with its origin. Her first article, “Liberal Jurisprudence and Abstracted Visions of Human Nature,” published in 1986, boldly—albeit respectfully—took on liberal legal philosopher John Rawls’ theory of justice and in doing so announced her own philosophical orientation. Matsuda concludes her piece with an idea that informs much of her work in subsequent years: “There is, as Rawls suggests, a place called Justice, and it will take many voices to get there.” The voices she has in mind are the voices that have been left out, “outsider” voices speaking as individuals and as members of their communities of origin, voices of subordinate peoples. Voices from the bottom, Matsuda believes—and critical race theory posits—have the power to open up new legal concepts of even constitutional dimension. Paradoxically, bringing in the voices of outsiders has helped to make Matsuda’s work central to the legal canon. A Yale Law School librarian ranked three of her publications as among the “top 10 most cited law review articles” for their year of publication. Judges and scholars regularly quote her work.

Louise Trubek
University of Wisconsin Law School

Louise G. Trubek is an Emerita Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and the Yale Law School, Louise is an active scholar in the fields of public interest law around the world, social justice advocacy, clinical legal education and the legal profession. Her scholarship and teaching also includes studies of regulation and governance in the European Union and the United States. Louise’s current research includes co-editing with Scott Cummings and Fabio Sa e Silva a book on the pro-bono movement worldwide: Global Pro Bono: Causes, Consequences and Contestation (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020). She also co-authored with Prof. Luz Herrera “The Emerging Legal Architecture for Social Justice” published in 44 NYU Rev. L & Soc. Change 355 (2020). Other publications in the field include “Social Justice Advocacy and Innovation: The Wisconsin Center for Public Representation 1974-Present” and “Transformations in Health Law Practice: The Intersection of Changes in Healthcare and Legal Workplaces” (with Barbara Zabawa and Paula Galowitz).

Charles Lawrence 
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

Professor Lawrence joined the William S. Richardson School of Law in 2008 from Georgetown. He began his teaching career at the University of San Francisco in 1974, was a tenured professor at Stanford and Georgetown, and has visited several other schools, including Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Southern California. Professor Lawrence is best known for his prolific work in antidiscrimination law, equal protection, and critical race theory. His most recent book, We Won’t Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), was co-authored by Professor Mari Matsuda. Professor Lawrence received the University of San Francisco School of Law’s Most Distinguished Professor Award; the John Bingham Hurlburt Award for Excellence in Teaching, presented by the 1990 graduating class of Stanford Law School; and the Society of American Law Teachers national teaching award. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Haverford College, Georgetown University, most recently, In December of 2019, he also received an honorary Doctorate from Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. He served as a member of the District of Columbia Board of Education and on many other public interest boards.

Setsuo Miyazawa
UC Hastings Law

Setsuo Miyazawa is a legal sociologist who received LL.B., LL.M., and S.J.D. from Hokkaido University and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in sociology from Yale. Professor Miyazawa has a wide range of research interests, including police and criminal justice, legal ethics and public interest lawyering, legal education, and corporate legal practice; he received his doctoral degree in Japan with a study on police, while receiving his American doctoral degree with a study on corporate legal departments. He has published or edited more than a dozen books in Japanese and English. His first English book, Policing in Japan (SUNY Press, 1992), received the 1993 Distinguished Book Award of the Division of International Criminology of the American Society of Criminology. He has also been active in the Law and Society Association (LSA) in the US, twice serving on its Board of Trustees. He co-founded the Collaborative Research Network 33 in East Asian Law and Society in the LSA in 2008 and received the International Scholarship Prize from the LSA in 2014. He co-founded the Section on East Asian Law and Society in the AALS in 2015 and the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) in 2016. He was the founding President of the ALSA in 2016 and 2017.

Past Winners

YEAR
INDIVIDUAL(S)

2021

Rosann Greenspan

Mari Matsuda

Louise Trubek

Charles Lawrence

Setsuo Miyazawa

2020

Carroll Seron

Keith Hawkins

Malcolm M. Feeley

Bryant Garth

David B. Wilkins

Neil Vidmar

2019

Richard L. Abel

Kitty Calavita

David Engel

William Felstiner

Lawrence Friedman

Marc Galanter

Joel Handler

Robert A. Kagan

Samuel Krislov

Herbert Kritzer

Jack Ladinsky

Richard Lempert

Felice Levine

Laura Nader

Stewart Macaulay

Lynn Mather

Frank Munger

Doris Marie Provine

Jerome H. Skolnick

Joyce Sterling

David M. Trubek

Nominations Require:

  • A nomination letter signed by at least 2 LSA members
  • OPTIONAL: other supporting materials

All supporting documents must be submitted in English and be in .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF format.

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