Book Award
Overview
Since 1961, Scribes has presented an annual award for the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year. The Scribes Book-Award Committee generally receives between 40 and 50 nominees each year, and the award is typically presented at the Scribes’ Annual Meeting. We accept nominations from book publishers. Nominations for the 2025 Book Award will be open soon. Please check back for updates. For more information, please contact us at scribeslegalwriters@gmail.com.
Recipients
2024
Winner:
Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth
Honorable Mentions:
American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795 by Edward J. Larson
The Practice of American Constitutional Law by H. Jefferson Powell
2023
Winner:
The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else by Frederick Schauer
Honorable Mentions:
Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapments of Indigenous Peoples by Peter P. d’Errico
Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy by Amy Gajda
2022
Winner:
Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights by Erwin Chemerinsky
Honorable Mentions:
Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash by Alexandra Brodsky
The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World by Fernanda Pirie
2021
Winner:
Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule
2020
Winner:
Intimate Lies and the Law by Jill Elaine Hasday
Honorable Mention:
The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent
2019
Winner:
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler
Honorable Mentions:
The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind by Justin Driver
We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow by Margaret Edds
2018
Winner:
The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
Honorable Mentions:
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Miles Lord: The Maverick Judge Who Brought Corporate America to Justice by Roberta Walburn
2017
Winner:
Impact: How Law Affects Behavior by Lawrence M. Friedman
Honorable Mentions:
John Henry Wigmore and the Rules of Evidence: The Hidden Origins of Modern Law by Andrew Porwancher
Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections by Richard L. Hasen
2016
Co-Winner:
Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood
Co-Winner:
The Big Trial: Law as Public Spectacle by Lawrence M. Friedman
Honorable Mentions:
Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu & His Quest for Justice by Lorraine K. Bannai
Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash
2015
First Place:
The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution by John D. Bessler
Honorable Mentions:
Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison by Nell Bernstein
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought 1870 – 1970 by Herbert Hovenkamp
2014
First Place:
Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law by Margaret Jane Radin
Second Place:
A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America by Evan J. Mandery
2013
First Place:
Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt
Second Place:
amashita’s Ghost: War Crimes, MacArthur’s Justice, and Command Accountability by Allan A. Ryan
2012
First Place:
Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis
Second Place:
Habeas Corpus After 9/11: Confronting America’s New Global Detention System by Jonathan Hafetz
Third Place:
We Must Not Be Afraid To Be Free: Stories of Free Expression in America by Ronald K.L. Collins and Sam Chaltain
2011
Winner:
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman
Honorable Mentions:
In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark by Martha Minow
From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation & Constitutional Law by Martha C. Nussbaum
Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America by James E. Ryan
2010
Winner:
The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates by John Temple
Honorable Mentions:
John Brown’s Trial by Brian McGinty
Judgment Calls: Principle and Politics in Constitutional Law by Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry
The Will of The People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution by Barry Friedman
2009
Winner:
The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler
Honorable Mentions:
Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War and the Right to Dissent by Ernest Freeberg
The Common Law in Colonial America, Volume I: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607-1660 by William E. Nelson
2008
Winner:
Landmark Law Cases and American Society series Peter Charles Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull, Editors
Honorable Mention:
Law and Order in Buffalo Bill’s Country: Legal Culture and Community on the Great Plains, 1867-1910 by Mark R. Ellis
2007
Winner:
Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies
Honorable Mentions:
Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism by Bruce Ackerman
Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
2006
Winner:
Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent by Ian Ayres and Gregory Klass
2005
Winner:
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime by Geoffrey R. Stone
2004
Winner:
The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment by Ronald M. Labbé and Jonathan Lurie
2003
Winner:
American Law in the 20th Century by Lawrence M. Friedman
Honorable Mentions:
Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights by Philippa Strum
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton
2002
Winner:
Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line 1861-1912 by Paul D. Nelson
2001
Winner:
Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution by Shawn Francis Peters
2000
Co-Winners:
Framing American Divorce by Norma Basch
Black’s Law Dictionary (7th ed.) by Bryan Garner, Editor in Chief
1999
Winner:
Cardozo by Andrew L. Kaufman
Honorable Mentions:
The Bill of Rights by Akhil Reed Amar
Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions by E. Allan Farnsworth
1998
Winner:
Roscoe Pound and Karl Llewellyn: Searching for an American Jurisprudence by N.E.H. Hull
Honorable Mentions:
Free Speech in its Forgotten Years 1870-1920 by David M. Rabban
Most Humble Servants by Stewart Jay
1997
Winner:
Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky
1996
Winner:
A Civil Action by Jonathon Harr
1995
Winner:
Hugo Black: A Biography by Roger Newman
Honorable Mention:
Child Witnesses: Fragile Voices in the American Legal System by Lucy S. McGough
1994
Winner:
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self by G. Edward White
Honorable Mention:
Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro
1993
Winner:
Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall by Carl T. Rowan
Honorable Mention:
The Constitution in Conflict by Robert A. Burt
1992
Winner:
The Fourth Estate and the Constitution by Lucas A. Scot Powe, Jr.
Honorable Mention:
William Wayne Justice: A Judicial Biography by Frank R. Kemerer
1991
Winner:
The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule by Douglas Laycock
Honorable Mention:
Cardozo: A Study in Reputation and the Problems of Jurisprudence by Richard A. Posner
1990
Winner:
Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes by Sheldon M. Novick
Honorable Mentions:
The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law by M. Ethan Katsh
Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America by Ethan Bronner
1989
Winner:
Constitutional Faith by Sanford Levinson
1988
Winner:
Abortion and Divorce in Western Law by Mary Ann Glendon
Honorable Mentions:
A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage by Bryan A. Garner
Natural Law and Justice by Lloyd L. Weinreb
1987
Winner:
Art Law: Rights and Liabilities of Creators and Collectors by Franklin Feldman, Stephen Weil, and Susan Duke Biederman
Honorable Mentions:
The Fundamentals of Legal Drafting by F. Reed Dickerson
The Supreme Court and the American Family: Ideology and Issues by Eva R. Rubin
1986
Winner:
The Federal Courts: Crisis and Reform by Richard A. Posner
Honorable Mentions:
Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain by Richard Epstein
Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity by Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith
1985
Winner:
When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitution and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community by James Boyd White
1984
Winner:
Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition by Harold J. Berman
1983
Winner:
When Government Speaks: Law, Politics, and Government Expression in America by Mark G. Yudof
1982
Winner:
Women in Law by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
1981
Winner:
Independent Journey: The Life of W. O. Douglas by James F. Simon
1980
Winner:
The Grammatical Lawyer by Morton S. Freeman
1979
Winner:
Hugo Black and the Judicial Revolution by Gerald T. Dunne
1978
Winner:
American Constitutional Law by Laurence H. Tribe
1977
Winner:
Changing Law: A Biography of Arthur T. Vanderbilt by Arthur T. Vanderbilt
1976
Winner:
Simple Justice by Richard Kluger
1975
Winner:
Appellate Judicial Opinions by Robert A. Leflar
1974
Winner:
A History of American Law by Lawrence M. Friedman
1973
Winner:
A Question of Judgment: The Fortas Case and the Struggle for the Supreme Court by Robert Shogan
1972
Winner:
The Defense Never Rests by F. Lee Bailey
1971
[No Award Given]
1970
Winner:
The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969, Their Lives and Major Opinions (4 vols.) by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel
1969
Winner:
On Law and Justice by Paul Freund
1968
Winner:
The Lawyers by Martin Mayer
1967
Winner:
The Jury Returns by Louis Nizer
1966
[No Award Given]
1965
Winner:
Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel by James B. Donovan
1964
Winner:
The Language of the Law by David Mellinkoff
1963
Winner:
A Bill Becomes a Law: Congress Enacts Civil Rights Legislation by Daniel M. Berman
1962
Winner:
Death and the Supreme Court by E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr.
1961
Co-Winners:
Felix Frankfurter: Scholar on the Bench by Helen Shirley Thomas
The People and the Court: Judicial Review in a Democracy by Charles Lund Black