ASLH Newsletter Winter 2001

Table of Contents

2001 Annual Meeting
Edward M. Wise Chair in Comparative Legal History
2000 Annual Meeting
2000 Meeting, Board of Directors
Grad Student on Board of Directors
Surrency Prize
Sutherland Prize
Reports on 2000 Annual Meeting Sessions

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2001 Annual Meeting, Chicago

The Society’s thirty-first annual meeting will be held November 8-10, in Chicago.  The host hotel will be the Allegro,180 West Randolph St.  Vicky Woeste of the American Bar Foundation vswoeste@nwu.edu is chair of the Local Arrangements Committee.  Bill Novak, History, University of Chicago, American Bar Foundation, is chair of the Program Committee nov9@midway.uchicago.edu.  Additional information about the meeting is available on the web at http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~law/chicago.html.

Edward M. Wise Chair in Comparative Legal History

The Wayne State University Law School has established a named chair in memory of Edward M. Wise, who died on October 27, 2000.  Edward was a life member of the Society.  The chair will be in comparative legal history. The Law School has secured funding for about half the amount required for an endowed chair.  Additional gifts are welcome.  Please send all contributions (made payable to the Edward M. Wise Memorial Fund) to the attention of Dean Joan Mahoney, Wayne State University Law School, Ferry Mall, Detroit, MI  48202

2000 Annual Meeting, Princeton

The Society held its thirtieth annual meeting in Princeton, N.J., October 19-21, 2000.  Special thanks go to CHARLES McCURDY, University of Virginia, and his program committee of ARIELA DUBLER, Yale University, JAMES GORDLEY, University of California, Berkeley, WILLLY FORBATH, University of Texas, JANET LOEGARD, Moravian College, JOYCE MALCOLM, Bentley College, RANDY McGOWEN, University of Oregon, RICHARD ROSS, Indiana University, Indianapolis,  and BILL WIECEK, Syracuse University.

Special thanks go to the Local Arrangements Committee, STAN KATZ and DIRK HARTOG, both of Princeton.  Stan was especially helpful in arranging to have the Woodrow Wilson School co-sponsor the Annual Lecture and the reception which followed STANLEY KUTLER’s delightful presentation, “An Historian’s Adventures with the Law.”

The Society is also grateful for the help with registration and other administrative details received from ROB SMITH, Bowling Green State University, MITRA SHARAFI, graduate student at Princeton, and ANDY GAIES, undergraduate student at Princeton.

2000 Annual Meeting, Board of Directors

The full minutes of the Board of Directors meeting are posted on the Society’s web page.  Key announcements made at the meeting were these:  

The Board voted special thanks for service to the Society to Don Nieman, who had concluded his term as Secretary-Treasurer.  In addition, the Board unanimously approved this resolution: “We hereby express our immense gratitude to Frances Hurst for her extraordinarily generous support of our ongoing effort to extend the great influence of Willard Hurst and his work through the Willard Hurst Legal History Institute.”  Finally, the Board authorized the Society to make a gift of life membership to Lewis Bateman in gratitude to him for his efforts and many years of service with the Society’s program for publication of its Studies in Legal History.

Graduate Student on Board of Directors

The Board approved a resolution calling for one position on the Board to be reserved for a graduate or law student.  The middle of this newsletter contains the ballot needed to amend the Society’s bylaws to effect that change.  The full text of the bylaws is on the web.

Surrency Prize

The 2000 Surrency Prize went to NORMA LANDAU for her article "Indictment for Fun and Profit:  A Prosecutor's Reward at Eighteenth-Century Quarter Sessions," in volume 17 of the Law and History Review.  The committee reported:

Landau's study of prosecutions in eighteenth century England's Quarter Sessions is as compelling as a detective novel and an impressive piece of historical research to boot.  We loved her title, and her thesis, that these prosecutions used the criminal process to mask an attempt to corruptly siphon money from civil litigants.  And her presentation is so clear and accessible we could hardly believe she is working in such an obscure body of records (records that one of us has worked in and to whose obscurity on several levels she readily attests!).  Landau makes the excruciatingly difficult task of making such records meaningful to legal historians today seem easy.

Sutherland Prize

The 2000 Sutherland Prize went to JOHN H. LANGBEIN for his article “The Prosecutorial Origins of Defence Counsel in the Eighteenth Century: the Appearance of Solicitors,” which appeared in the Cambridge Law Journal vol. 58, part 2.  Because of the number of excellent articles under final consideration, the committee decided to award an honorable mention citation to NORMA LANDAU’s article “Indictment for Fun and Profit: a Prosecutor’s Reward at Eighteenth Century Quarter Sessions,” which appeared in the Law and History Review, vol. 17, no. 3.

            The citations for the awards read as follows:

The Sutherland Prize Committee has made the unanimous decision to award the 2000 Prize to Professor John H. Langbein for his article “The Prosecutorial  Origins of Defence Counsel in the Eighteenth Century: the Appearance of Solicitors” which appeared in the Cambridge Law Journal for July, 1999.  Continuing his long-term examination of the development of procedure in criminal cases, Professor Langbein  gives a persuasive explanation for the decision of judges in the 1730s to reverse the practice of centuries and permit admission of defense council in non-treason cases.  The article utilizes extensive research in reports of State Trials, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, and contemporary tract literature to argue that it was pretrial practice, not the use of prosecution counsel at trial, which occasioned the change: increased use of prosecuting solicitors and the reward system led judges to attempt to even the balance between prosecution and defendant.  Through his work, Professor Langbein has once again enlightened us on the ways in which informal or unofficial alterations in practice may lead to widespread change in the entire structure of an institution.

Using samples of Middlesex Bills of Indictment from across the eighteenth century, Professor Landau shows that many actions for nonfelonious offenses against the person, brought as criminal suits, had as their objection compensation or apology or both and were in fact treated by both prosecutor and the court of Quarter Sessions as essentially civil actions.  The article compels a rethinking of modern categories of “crime” and “criminal” as applied to the eighteenth century, illustrating the lack of definitive distinction between criminal and civil in the minds of both prosecutors and judges.

Officers and Directors, 2001
President:   Thomas A. Green, University of Michigan	tagreen@umich.edu
President-Elect:   Robert W. Gordon, Yale University	robert.w.gordon@yale.edu
Secretary-Treasurer:   Walter F. Pratt, Jr., Notre Dame Law School	pratt.1@nd.edu
Board of Directors
Barbara A. Black (2002), Columbia University	bab@law.columbia.edu
James Brundage (2003), University of Kansas	jabrun@ukans.edu
Dan Ernst (2002*) Georgetown University	ernst@law.georgetown.edu
Ariela Gross (2003*), University of Southern California	agross@law.usc.edu
DeLoyd J. Guth (2003), University of Manitoba	djguth@cc.umanitoba.ca
Douglas Hay (2002), York University	dhay@yorku.ca
Laura Kalman (Immediate Past-President), University of California, Santa Barbara	kalman@humanitas.ucsb.edu
Herbert A. Johnson (2001), University of South Carolina	hjohnson@law.law.sc.edu
Yasuhide Kawashima (2001, University of Texas, El Paso	ykawashi@utep.edu
Bruce H. Mann (2001), University of Pennsylvania	bmann@law.upenn.edu
Charles McCurdy (2003), University of Virginia	cwm@virginia.edu
William E. Nelson (2002), New York University	lisa.mihajlovic@nyu.edu
Barbara Shapiro (2003), University of California, Berkeley	bshapiro@socrates.berkeley.edu
Aviam Soifer (2001), Boston College	soifera@bc.edu
Emily Van Tassel (2002), Indiana University	evantass@indiana.edu
Sue Sheridan Walker (2001*), Northeastern Illinois University	SS-Walker@neiu.edu
* Executive Committee Member
() Indicates year term expires
ASLH Committees, 2001
Nominating Committee
Mary Dudziak (2001), University of Southern California, Chair	mdudziak@law.usc.edu
Thomas Gallanis (2003), Ohio State University	gallanis.2@osu.edu
Philip Hamburger (2001), University of Chicago	hamburger@law.uchicago.edu
Sarah Hanley (2003), University of Iowa	sarah-hanley@uiowa.edu
Victoria Woeste (2002), American Bar Foundation	vswoeste@northwestern.edu
() Indicates year term expires
2001 Program Committee
Bill Novak, History, University of Chicago, American Bar Foundation, Chair	nov9@midway.uchicago.edu
Mary Sarah Bilder, Law, Boston College	bilder@bc.edu
Howard Gillman, Political Science, University of Southern California	gillman@usc.edu
Julius Kirshner, History, University of Chicago	jkir@midway.uchicago.edu
Dan Klerman, Law, University of Southern California	dklerman@law.usc.edu
Felicia Kornbluh, History, Duke University	kornbluh@duke.edu
Ken Ledford, History, Case Western Reserve University	kxl15@po.cwru.edu
Maria Elena Martinez, History, American Bar Foundation	martinez@abfn.org
Jennifer Mnookin, Law, University of Virginia	jlm2bc@virginia.edu
Dalia Tsuk, Law University of Arizona	tsuk@nt.law.arizona.edu
Barbara Welke, History, University of Minnesota	welke004@tc.umn.edu
Michael Willrich, History, Brandeis University	willrich@brandeis.edu
2001 Local Arrangements Committee
Victoria Woeste, American Bar Foundation, Chair	vswoeste@merle.acns.nwu.edu
Ben Brown, John Marshall Law School	7brown@jmls.edu
David Morrison	DLMorrison@aol.com
Sue Sheridan Walker, Northeastern Illinois University	SS-Walker@neiu.edu
Stephen Siegel, DePaul Law School	ssiegel@wppost.depaul.edu
Standing Committee on Conferences and the Annual Meeting
Craig Joyce (1998) University of Houston, Chair	cjoyce@uh.edu
Christine A. Desan (1998), Harvard University	desan@law.harvard.edu
Daniel Ernst (2000), Georgetown University	ernst@wpgate.law3.georgetown.edu
Robert W. Gordon (2000) (ex officio), Yale University	robert.w.gordon@yale.edu
William E. Nelson (1998), New York University	lisa.mihajlovic@nyu.edu
David S. Tanenhaus (1998), University of Nevada, Las Vegas	tanenhad@nevada.edu
() Indicates year appointed
Publications Committee
Bruce H. Mann (1998), University of Pennsylvania, Chair	bmann@law.upenn.edu
Thomas J. Davis (1998), Arizona State University	tjdavis@asu.edu
Hendrik Hartog (1997), Princeton University	hartog@princeton.edu
Cynthia Herrup (2000), Duke University	cherrup@duke.edu
Tahirih V. Lee (1998), Florida State University	TLee@law.fsu.edu
Linda Przybyszewski (2000), University of Cincinnati	przybyL@email.uc.edu
Christopher Tomlins (1996), American Bar Foundation	clt@abfn.org
Christopher Waldrep (1997), San Francisco State University	Cwaldrep51@aol.com/cwaldrep@sfsu.edu
() Indicates year appointed
Committee on Documentary Preservation
Michael J. Churgin (1982), University of Texas, Chair	mchurgin@mail.law.utexas.edu
Christian G. Fritz (1985), University of New Mexico	fritz@law.unm.edu
Michael Griffith (1990), Office of the Clerk, U. S. District Court, Northern District of California
DeLloyd J. Guth (1988), University of Manitoba	djguth@cc.umanitoba.ca
J. Gordon Hylton (1998), Marquette University	joseph.hylton@marquette.edu
Harold M. Hyman (1998), Rice University	hyman@rice.edu
Maeva Marcus (1988), U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society
Gregory Mark (1998), Rutgers University, Newark	gmark@andromeda.rutgers.edu
R. Michael McReynolds (1985), U. S. National Archives
Rayman L. Solomon (1982), Rutgers University, Camden	raysol@camlaw.rutgers.edu
Marsha Trimble (1992), University of Virginia	mt9c@virginia.edu
() Indicates year appointed
Honors Committee
Richard Helmholz (1997), University of Chicago, Chair	dick_helmholz@law.uchicago.edu
Gregory Alexander (2000), Cornell University	alexandr@law.mail.cornell.edu
Linda Kerber (1998), University of Iowa	lkerber@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu
() Indicates year appointed
Future Projects Committee
William Nelson, New York University (2000), Chair	lisa.mihajlovic@nyu.edu
Susanna Blumenthal (2000), University of Michigan	sblumen@umich.edu
Willy Forbath (2000), University of Texas	wforbath@mail.law.utexas.edu
Robert W. Gordon (2000), Yale University	robert.w.gordon@yale.edu
Ariela Gross (2000), University of Southern California	agross@law.usc.edu
Laura Kalman (2000), University of California, Santa Barbara	kalman@humanitas.ucsb.edu
Robert Palmer (2000), University of Houston	RPalmer@uh.edu
David Sugarman (2000), University of Lancaster	d.sugarman@lancaster.ac.uk
() Indicates year appointed
Membership Committee
Robert Goldman (1998), Virginia Union University, Chair	rmgoldman@msn.com
Carol Chomsky (1998), University of Minnesota	choms001@umn.edu
Catherine Fisk (1998), Loyola University
Thomas Gallanis (1998), Ohio State University	gallanis.2@osu.edu
Thomas Green (ex officio), University of Michigan	tagreen@umich.edu
Ron Harris, Tel Aviv University (1999)	harrisr@post.tau.ac.il
Kenneth Ledford (1998), Case Western Reserve University	kxl15@po.cwru.edu
Fred Konefsky (1998), SUNY-Buffalo	konefsky@acsu.buffalo.edu
Randall McGowen (1998), University of Oregon	rmcgowen@oregon.uoregon.edu
Bill Novak (ex officio), University of Chicago, American Bar Foundation	nov9@midway.uchicago.edu
Walter F. Pratt, Jr. (ex officio), Notre Dame Law School	pratt.1@nd.edu
G. Edward White (1998), University of Virginia	gew@virginia.edu