Professor Justin Driver has been awarded the 2013 Cromwell Article Prize which is given by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation for “the best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar,” according to its website. The award was announced during the American Society for Legal History annual meeting Nov. 9 in South Florida.
Driver’s article, “The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court” was published in Volume 100 of the California Law Review (2012). The article offers a revisionist account of the Supreme Court of the United States’ jurisprudence when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice from 1953-69 — commonly referred to as the Warren Court.
Award committee members praised “the beauty of language and sweep of interpretation” in Driver’s article. The citation stated, “the article serves as an extended meditation on historical contingency, on the relative significance of choice and chance in history, and brilliantly achieves one of the greatest contributions the study of history can offer: the elucidation of the nature and extent of our own choices.” Read the full citation on H-Net.
Driver, who joined The University of Texas School of Law faculty in 2009, researches constitutional law, constitutional theory and the intersection of race with legal institutions. Besides the California Law Review, Driver’s scholarly work has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Supreme Court Review and Texas Law Review. He’s also a contributor to The New Republic magazine.