Congratulations to my friend Mark Weiner (Law, Rutgers-Newark) who has won this year’s Silver Gavel Award for his book Black Trials:  Citizenship from the Beginning of Slavery to the End of Caste (Knopf, 2004).

Prior winners of this prestigious award include Alexander Bickel for The Morality of Consent; Raoul Berger for Government by Judiciary; Richard Posner for The Federal Courts:  Crisis and Reform; Ronald Dworkin for Law’s Empire; L.A. (Scot) Powe, Jr. for American Broadcasting and the First Amendment; Lawrence Friedman for Crime and Punishment in Ameican History; and G. Edward White for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:  Law and the Inner Self. 

Distinguished company indeed!