Book Award

Scribes 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 receives between 30 and 40 nominees each year. The Scribes Book Award is presented at the Scribes luncheon, during the ABA annual meeting.
In 2006, for the first time, a member of the Book-Award Committee, Steve Sheppard, wrote his own short, personal reviews of most of the books that the committee received. Click here to read his reviews. He did the same thing in 2007. Click here to read those reviews.

Recipients:

2012	Gold: Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis Silver: Habeas Corpus After 9/11: Confronting America's New Global Detention System by Jonathan Hafetz Bronze: 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 (Cover Image Unavailable) 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 (Cover Image Unavailable)
1976	Winner: Simple Justice by Richard Kluger

1975	Winner: Appellate Judicial Opinions by Robert A. Leflar (Cover Image Unavailable) (This link connects to a search engine for used and out-of-print books at barnesandnoble.com.)
1974	Winner: A History of American Law by Lawrence M. Friedman (Cover Image Unavailable) (This link connects to a search engine for used and out-of-print books at barnesandnoble.com.)
1973	Winner: A Question of Judgment: The Fortas Case and the Struggle for the Supreme Court by Robert Shogan (Cover Image Unavailable) (This link connects to a search engine for used and out-of-print books at barnesandnoble.com.)
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 (Cover Image Unavailable)
1969	Winner: On Law and Justice by Paul Freund (Cover Image Unavailable)
1968	Winner: The Lawyers by Martin Mayer (Cover Image Unavailable)
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 (Cover Image Unavailable) (This link connects to a search engine for used and out-of-print books at barnesandnoble.com.)
1964	Winner: The Language of the Law by David Mellinkoff (Cover Image Unavailable)
1963	Winner: A Bill Becomes a Law: Congress Enacts Civil Rights Legislation by Daniel M. Berman (Cover Image Unavailable)
1962	Winner: Death and the Supreme Court by E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. (Cover Image Unavailable)
1961	Co-Winners: Felix Frankfurter: Scholar on the Bench by Helen Shirley Thomas (Cover Image Unavailable) (This link connects to a search engine for used and out-of-print books at barnesandnoble.com.) The People and the Court: Judicial Review in a Democracy by Charles Lund Black (Cover Image Unavailable)

Book Award

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