Results of Elections

Officers

Bruce H. Mann, the Carl F. Schipper, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard University, who ran unopposed, stood elected as Preseident-elect of the Society. As a result of this election, Constance Backhouse of Ottawa University became the president of the Society; Maeva Marcus became Immediate Past President, and Charles Donahue became functus officio.

Directors

Mary Sarah Bilder of Boston College, Holly Brewer of North Carolina State University, Risa Goluboff of the University of Virginia, Dylan Penningroth of Northwestern University, and Victoria Saker Woeste of the American Bar Foundation were elected to three-year terms on the Board of Directors. They replace Lauren Benton of New York University, Christine Desan of Harvard University, William Forbath of the University of Texas, Sally Hadden of Florida State University, and Robin Chapman Stacey of the University of Washington, whose terms have expired.

Nominating Committee

Sarah Barringer Gordon of Pennsylvania University and David Konig of Washington University (St. Louis) were elected to three-year terms on the Nominating Committee. They replace Christopher Capozzola of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David S. Tanenhaus of the University of Nevada (Las Vegas), whose terms have expired.

Secretary and Treasurer

Thomas Gallanis, whose term had expired, was replaced as Secretary of the Society by Sally Hadden. Craig Klafter continues as Treasurer.

Prizes and Awards

Cromwell Research Fellowships

William Nelson Cromwell Research Fellowships were awarded to:
Kevin Arlyck, who holds a law degree from New York University and is a Ph.D. candidate there as well, is completing a dissertation on the role of lawyers and federal courts in American foreign policy during the first decades after independence. Mark Hanna who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an assistant professor at The College of William & Mary, is working on the law of piracy in colonial America. Kelly Kennington who holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School, is working on a study of slavery and freedom in antebellum America by examining lawsuits for freedom filed in the border city of St. Louis, the site of the Dred Scott case. Felicity Turner, who is a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, is in the midst of a dissertation on infanticide in the nineteenth century United States as a way to probe the changing legal status of women and their relationship to the state. Kyle Volk, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is an assistant professor at the University of Montana (Missoula), is working on majority rule and minority rights in the decades before the American Civil War.

Preyer Scholars

This year’s Preyer Memorial Committee chose two 2009 Preyer Scholars:
Cary Franklin (J.D. Yale University; now Irving S. Ribicoff Scholar at Yale Law School) for her paper “Sex Roles and the Foundations of Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law” and Elizabeth Katz (J.D., University of Virginia; now clerk, United States District Court, District of Maryland) for her paper “'Wife Beating’ and 'Uninvited Kisses’ in the Supreme Court and Society in the Early Twentieth Century.”

Cromwell Dissertation Prize

The Cromwell Dissertation prize was awarded to:
Jed Shugerman for his dissertation “The People's Courts: The Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial Power in America”—a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. at Yale University in 2008.

Cromwell Book Prize

The Cromwell Book Prize was awarded to:
Rebecca M. McLennan, for The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2008.

Surrency Prize

This year‘s Surrency Prize was awarded to:
Gautham Rao “The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” which appeared in Volume 26 of Law and History Review.

Sutherland Prize

This year’s Sutherland Prize was awarded to:
Paul D. Halliday and G. Edward White for their joint article, “The Suspension Clause: English Text, Imperial Contexts, and American Implications,” which appeared in Volume 94 of the Virginia Law Review.

Cromwell Book Prize

The John Phillip Reid Prize for the best book in legal history published in English during the previous the calendar year was awarded to:
Rebecca M. McLennan, for The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2008.

Other Board Business

The Board voted to increase the dues for student members from $20.00 to $25.00 per year and of emeritus members from $20.00 to $35.00 per year. The Board also voted to raise the price of life memberships for $1000.00 to $2000.00

The Board voted to amend the by-laws to eliminate the category of institutional members and to make former instiutional members simply subscribers to the Law & History Review. These amendments were noticed to the membership by posting the attached document online. Unless ten or more members object, they will stand adopted on December 17, 2009.