ASLH Election
results...
Victoria Saker Woeste,
chair of the ASLH nominating committee, announced the results of the
ASLH election.
Elected to the Board of
Directors:
- Thomas Garden
Barnes, Professor of History and Law, University of California,
Berkeley
- Barry Cushman,
Professor of Law and Professor of History, University of Virginia
- Laura F. Edwards,
Associate Professor, History Department, Duke University
- William P. LaPiana,
Rita and Joseph Solomon Professor of Wills, Trusts, and Estates, New
York Law School
- Barbara Y. Welke,
Associate Professor of History, University of Minnesota.
Elected to the
Nominating Committee:
- Sally E.
Hadden, Associate Professor of History and Law, Florida State
University.
Dirk Hartog
steps down as editor of Studies in Legal History...
At the San Diego meeting
Dirk Hartog stepped down as editor of the ASLH book series, Studies
in Legal History. Tom Green will continue and Dan Ernst will now
serve as his coeditor.
Tom Green said this about
the change in editors:
This year is
Dirk's tenth and final year as co-editor of Studies in Legal History.
Over the past decade, Dirk has set the highest possible standards
regarding editorial judgment, industriousness and helpfulness to
aspiring, and actual, Series authors. We have worked closely together
at every stage of all our projects; to me, his departure is a great
personal loss. It is a great loss as well to the Society, on whose
behalf the Board will no doubt want to give him special thanks.
Both the Society at
large and I, as ongoing editor, are most fortunate in having Dan Ernst
as successor to Dirk. Dan possesses very special talent (which was
obvious to all even before publication of his prize-winning book), and
one aspect of that talent is his excellent editorial judgment.
Although Dan officially becomes co-editor at the close of tonight's
meeting, he has generously been helping Dirk and me from the time of
his selection this summer. Both Dirk and I (and we suppose Dan) want
to thank the Publication's committee, and especially its chair, Bruce
Mann, for their judicious and most successful handling of the
selection process.
Surrency Prize
unanimously awarded to Maria
Ågren...
The Surrency Prize
committee has made the unanimous decision to award the 2002 prize to
Professor Maria Ågren for her article, "Asserting One's Rights: Swedish
Property Law in the Transition from Community Law to State Law," which
appeared in volume 19 of the Law and History Review (2001).
In the context of early
modern Sweden, Ågren explores the slow decline in the legitimacy of
immemorial prescription as a defense of property rights. Taking the
immense importance of immemorial prescription in medieval law and
society as a starting point, Ågren asks why particular social groups in
seventeenth and eighteenth century Sweden increasingly questioned the
fairness and utility of the doctrine. To answer her question, she
interweaves political, jurisprudential, and economic explanations.
Relevant to her account are developments as varied as the growing
importance of professional lawyers, conflicts between the interests of
the nobility and the crown, deepening skepticism about the value of lay,
village-level legal knowledge, and increasing competition over land
driven by a growing population. The committee is please to award the
Surrency Prize to this virtuoso performance.
The Erwin C. Surrency
Prize is awarded for the best article or review essay published during
the previous year in Law and History Review. Serving on the prize
committee were Carol Weisbrod (University of Connecticut), James Whitman
(Yale University), and Richard Ross (University of Wisconsin, Madison),
chair.