Edward S. Corwin Award

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Edward S. Corwin Award

Nominations are closed.

The Corwin Award honors the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law.

Edward S. Corwin was a former Association president who is nationally known and widely published. He consulted with many other academics as well as politicians involved with constitutional issues, most notably when he publicly supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Supreme Court reorganization (“court packing”) plan. The award is presented at the APSA Annual Meeting and carries a cash prize of $750.

Nomination Information
Public law is broadly defined to include the judicial process, judicial behavior, judicial biography, courts, law, legal systems, the American constitutional system, civil liberties, or any other substantial area, or any work which deals in a significant fashion with a topic related to or having substantial impact on the American Constitution.

Eligibility: Nominees do not have to be members of APSA, affiliated with an institution in the United States, or an American citizen in order to be considered for an award.
Dissertations must have been successfully defended within the previous two calendar years (dissertations for the 2026 award must be defended in 2024 or 2025).

Self-nominations are accepted. Nominations from non-PhD departments and institutions are also welcome if the nominee is currently employed there.

APSA will accept up to two nominations for the Corwin Award per school or political science department.

Award Committee

Chair

Kirk Randazzo, University of South Carolina

Member

Lee Epstein, University of Southern California

Member

Isaac Unah, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Listing of Awardees

Year	Author	Dissertation	Institution
2025	Benjamin Garcia-Holgado	The Judicial Bulwark: Courts and the Populist Erosion of Democracy	University of Delaware
2024	Lucien Ferguson	The Spirit of Caste: Recasting the History of Civil Rights	Boston College
2023	Sam Hayes	Courtroom Cartography: How Federal Court Redistricting Has Shaped American Democracy from Baker to Rucho	Boston College
2022	Nikhil Kalyanpur	Liberalism Outsourced: Why Oligarchs and Autocrats Fight in Foreign Courts	Georgetown University
2021	Anthony DeMattee	Domesticating Civil Society: How and Why Governments Use Laws to Regulate CSOs	Indiana University
2020	Tommaso Pavone	The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics Behind the Judicial Construction of Europe	Princeton University
2019	Yasser Kureshi	Judging the Generals: Judicial-Military Interactions in Authoritarian and Post-Authoritarian States	Brandeis University
2018	Abigail Matthews	Connected Courts: The Diffusion of Precedent Across State Supreme Courts	University of Iowa
2017	Allison Harris	Who’s on the Bench?: Political Implications of Judicial Characteristics and Judicial Selection Methods in the U.S.	University of Chicago
2016	Jud Mathews	Constitutional Rights, Private Law, and Judicial Power	Yale University
2015	Matthew Hitt	Judgment-Rationale Inconsistency in the US Supreme Court	Ohio State University
2014	Rachel Hinkle	The Role of the United States Courts of Appeals in Legal Development	Washington University, St. Louis
2013	Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos	The Collapse of Impunity in Latin America: Legal Culture, Strategic Litigation and Judicial Behavior	University of Notre Dame
2012	Lauren McCarthy	Trafficking (In)justice: Law Enforcement’s Response to Human Trafficking in Russia	University of Wisconsin, Madison
2011	Emily Zackin	Positive Constitutional Rights in the United States	Princeton University
2010	Patrick Peel	Building Judicial Capacity in the Early American State: Legal Populism, County Courts, and Credit, 1645-1860	Johns Hopkins University
2009	Mark Massoud	Who Rules the Law? How Government, Aid Agencies, and Civil Society Manipulate Law in Sudan	University of California, Berkeley
2008	Diana Kapiszewsk	Challenging Decisions: High Courts and Economic Governance in Argentina and Brazil	University of California, Berkeley
2007	Maria Dimitrova Popova	Judicial Independence and Political Competition: Electoral and Defamation Disputes in Russia and Ukraine	Harvard University
2006	Justin J. Wert	The Not-So-Great Writ: Habeas Corpus and American Political Development	University of Oklahoma
2005	Lori A. Johnson	Who Governs the Guardians? The Politics of Policymaking for Federal Courts	Mercer University
2005	Martin J. Sweet	Supreme Policymaking: Coping with the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Policies	Honors College, Florida Atlantic University
2004	Tamir Moustafa	Law Versus the State: The Expansion of Constitutional Power in Egypt, 1980-2001	University of Washington
2003	Jeffrey Kaplan Staton	Judicial Activism and Public Authority Compliance: The Role of Public Support in the Mexican Separation-Of-Powers System	Washington University
2002	Nancy Scherer	Making a Point: The Politicization of Lower Federal Court Appointments in the Modern Political Era	University of Chicago
2001	Michael Ebeid	Influencing the Supreme Court: Democratic Accountability and the Presidential Threat to Judicial Independence	Yale University
2000	Kenneth I. Kersch	Frames of Progress: The Political Imagination of Rights and Liberties in the United States Supreme Court	Cornell University
1999	Kathleen Ann Uradnik	Government by Consent Decree: San Francisco’s Struggle for Institutional Reform	University of California
1998	Christopher J. Zorn	U.S. Government Litigation Strategies in the Federal Appellate Courts	Ohio State University
1997	Thomas F. Burke	Litigation and its Discontents: The Politics of Adversarial Legalism	University of California, Berkeley
1996	Charles R. Epp	Constitutional Courts and the Rights Agenda in Comparative Perspective	University of Wisconsin
1995	Cary Coglianese	Challenging the Rules, Litigation and Bargaining in the Administrative Process	University of Michigan
1995	James F. Spriggs, II	The Impact of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Federal Administrative Agencies, 1954-1990	Washington University
1994	Deena Rabinowicz Dugan	The Politics of Medical Malpractice Reform in the American States	Johns Hopkins University
1994	Susan Brodie Haire	Judges’ Decisions in the United States Courts of Appeals: A Reassessment of Geographical Patterns in Judicial Behavior	University of South Carolina
1993	Andrew Koppelman	The Antidiscrimination Project: Foundations, Scope, Limits	Yale University
1992	No award given
1991	Terri Jennings Peretti	The Responsible Exercise of Judicial Power: In Defense of a Political Court	University of California, Berkeley
1990	James W. Tubbs	Roman Law Mind, Common Law Mind	Johns Hopkins University
1989	Mark Graber	The Transformation of the Modern Constitutional Defense of Free Speech	Yale University
1988	Graham Walker	The Deep Structure of Contemporary Constitutional Controversy: Morality, Skepticism and Augustine	University of Notre Dame
1987	H. W. Perry, Jr.	Deciding to Decide: The Agenda-Setting Process in the United States Supreme Court	University of Michigan
1986	Susan E. Lawrence	The Poor in Court: The Legal Impact of Expanded Access	Johns Hopkins University
1985	Kim Lane Scheppele	Legal Secrets: Common-Law Rules and the Social Distribution of Knowledge	University of Chicago
1984	Donald A. Downs	Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment: The Skokie Case and the Limits of Speech	University of California, Berkeley
1983	Mark Silverstein	Liberalism, Democracy, and the Court: Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, and Constitutional Decision-Making	Cornell University
1982	Timothy O’Neill	The Politics of Equality: Litigational Politics and Democratic Theory	University of California, Berkeley
1981	Stanley Charles Brubaker	Benjamin Nathan Cardozo: An Intellectual Biography	University of Virginia
1980	Calvin Jillson	Compromise and Critical Realignment in the American Constitutional Convention of 1787	University of Maryland
1979	Harry N. Hirsch	The Uses of Psychology in Judicial Biography: Felix Frankfurter and the Ambiguities of Self-Image	Princeton University
1979	Irving Frederick Lefberg	Analyzing Judicial Change: The Uses of ‘Systematic Biography’ in Anticipating the Court and Shaping Its Future Policies	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1978	Philip Leon Dubois	Judicial Elections in the States: Patterns and Consequences	University of Wisconsin, Madison
1977	Milton Heumann	Adapting to Plea Bargaining: The Experience of Prosecutors, Judges and Defense Attorneys	Yale University
1976	Thomas Uhlman	Racial Justice: Black Judges and Defendants in the Metro City Criminal Court, 1968-1974	University of North Carolina
1975	No award given
1974	James E. Radcliffe	The Case-or-Controversy Provision — How Limited Is the Political Role of the Federal Courts?	Pennsylvania State University
1973	Lief Hastings Carter	The Limits of Order: Uncertainty and Adaptation in a District Attorney’s Office	University of California
1972	Walter G. Markham	Offenders in the Federal Courts: A Search for the Social Correlates of Justices	University of Pennsylvania
1971	Douglas E. Rosenthal	Client Participation in Professional Decision: The Lawyer-Client Relationship in Personal Injury Claims	Yale University
1970	No award given
1969	James P. Levine	The Bookseller and the Law of Obscenity: Toward an Empirical Theory of Free Expression	Northwestern University
1968	No award given
1967	Richard Richardson	A Study of the Judicial Process in Three U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1956-1961	Tulane University
1966	William K. Muir, Jr.	Law and Attitude Change	Yale University
1965	John D. Sprague	Voting Patterns on the United States Supreme Court: Cases in Federalism, 1889-1959	Washington University
1964	David F. Hughes	Salmon P. Chase: Chief Justice	Centre College of Kentucky

Support for Scholarship

We are continually grateful for the contributions from APSA members and friends that make our work possible. Your donation helps continue the Corwin Award for future scholars researching public law. Thank you for your support of APSA and scholars across the discipline.