William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize is awarded annually to the best book in the field of American legal history by an early career scholar. The prize is designed to recognize and promote new work in the field by graduate students, law students, post-doctoral fellows and early career faculty. The work may be in any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies, but scholarship in the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference. The prize is limited to a first book copyrighted no later than the tenth calendar year following the calendar year in which the author was awarded a PhD or other highest degree earned. Submission of a book by an author who has previously been awarded a Cromwell Foundation Prize for a dissertation or article must be accompanied by a showing that the book enhances, or differs in subject from, the previous work. The author of the winning book receives a prize of $5,000. The Foundation awards the prize after a review of the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History. The Committee shall consider a book in the year of its copyright date or of its actual publication. However, no book shall be considered for the prize more than once. The committee will accept nominations from authors, presses, or anyone else, of any book published in the previous calendar year or that bears a copyright date from the previous calendar year. Nominations are submitted by sending copies of the book and the curriculum vitae of its author to the Chair of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee and to each member of the committee.