Three Honorable Mentions Recognize Curtis A. Bradley, Petra Molnar, and David M. Rabban
September 29, 2025: Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers—is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Scribes Book Award and three Honorable Mentions recognizing outstanding legal scholarship published in 2024. Since 1961, Scribes has presented this annual award to honor exceptional writing and research in the law. Books are judged first and foremost for clarity and quality of writing, with depth of research also considered.
Winner
Wes E. Henricksen, In Fraud We Trust: How Leaders in Politics, Business, and Media Profit from Lies—and How to Stop Them (University Press of Kansas 2024). Henricksen, an associate professor of law at Barry University School of Law, examines “fraud on the public”—large‑scale deception that can evade traditional legal remedies. The book traces how mass disinformation flourishes and proposes doctrinal and policy responses, including narrowing First Amendment shelter for public‑directed fraud.
“In Fraud We Trust distinguishes itself through its lucid writing, rigorous research, and compelling message. The book explains how influential people in politics, business, and media manipulate lies to gain power and money, often escaping the law,” shared the Honorable Michael Hyman, Chair of Scribes’ Book Award Committee. “Prof. Henricksen makes complex ideas simple and understandable, while maintaining the content’s depth and insight. He also suggests ways to combat misinformation and safeguard democracy.”
Scribes plans to host a CLE with Professor Henricksen in March 2026. Please visit the Scribes website in coming weeks for the date and time.
Honorable Mentions
Due to the exceptional strength of this year’s entries, Scribes, in a rare decision, has awarded three Honorable Mentions. “Each book is exceptionally well-written, thoroughly researched, and worthy of a broad readership,” stated Hyman on behalf of the Book Award Committee. In alphabetical order by author, the three Honorable Mention books are as follows:
Curtis A. Bradley, Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs: Constitutional Authority in Practice (Harvard University Press 2024). Bradley, the Allen M. Singer Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, offers a fresh account of how Congress’s and the President’s longstanding practices—“historical gloss”—shape separation of powers in foreign affairs.
Petra Molnar, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (The New Press 2024). Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist who co‑runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, documents how governments and private contractors deploy AI‑driven surveillance at borders, with profound human consequences.
David M. Rabban, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press 2024). Rabban, the Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, develops a comprehensive account of academic freedom as a First Amendment right grounded in decades of case law. (Publication date: August 13, 2024.)
About the Scribes Book Award
The Scribes Book Award recognizes the best work of legal scholarship published in the preceding calendar year. Recent winners include Dylan C. Penningroth’s Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (2024), Frederick Schauer’s The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else (2023), and Erwin Chemerinsky’s Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (2022). To enter a book in the 2026 competition, please visit the Scribes website.
About Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers
Scribes is a national organization devoted to promoting excellence in legal writing and clear communication in the law. Scribes will be celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2026.
Congratulations to the 2025 honorees. Scribes thanks all entrants for advancing legal scholarship.