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 nominations are due by March 15. The Scribes Book Award is presented at Scribes' annual meeting.
Recipients
2022
Winner: Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights by Erwin Chemerinsky
Honorable Mention:
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