J. Willard Hurst Book Prize

In the spirit of Willard Hurst's own work, the Hurst Book Prize is given to the best work in socio-legal history. 

Leor Halevi’s  Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida 1865-1935 (Columbia University Press, 2019) is a model of how to do truly globalized legal history. It masterfully traverses time and place to provide fresh insights into how ideas, people and commodities have travelled in the Islamic world over time. The book invites us to re-examine afresh some of life’s most mundane items –including some of the most discussed commodities of the Covid19 era, all the while enriching how we understand the history of the Islamic world.

Sarah Seo’s Policing the Open Road (Harvard University Press, 2019) provides an exceedingly well-researched and detailed account of the modern history of policing and police power in the US, and its impact on individual rights to privacy. It provides both a skillful overview of the caselaw on the topic and rich perspective on the individual, social, and contextual forces at play in the growth of the police’s power to surveil citizens in their cars.

Past Winners * All 2020 Award Winners * All 2019 Award Winners