Daniel J. Sharfstein has been awarded the 2012 James Willard Hurst Prize for sociolegal history by the Law and Society Association. The prestigious prize, which is awarded annually, goes to the author of the best work in sociolegal history published during the previous calendar year. Sharfstein was recognized for The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, published by Penguin Press in 2011. The book explores how Americans have thought about and experienced race and how concepts of race have changed from the colonial era to the twentieth century by chronicling the histories of three families whose members crossed the color line from black to white.
The award is named in honor of J. Willard Hurst, a pioneering legal historian who taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School for much of his career, and approached legal history from the standpoint of how law worked in the lives of average Americans. The Hurst Prize recognizes works in legal history that explore the relationship between law and society or which illuminate the use, functions and cultural meaning of law in society. The prize, which carries a cash award, was presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, held from June 5-8 in Honolulu. Sharfstein joins a distinguished list of legal historians who have been honored by the Law and Society Association with the Hurst Prize since its establishment in 1980.
“By meticulously tracing generations of Americans for more than 150 years, Sharfstein stunningly documents the fluid nature of racial identity in the United States since the Civil War,” wrote the Prize Committee, which included Vicky Saker-Woeste of American Bar Foundation, Paul Frymer of Princeton University, Joanna Grisinger of Northwestern University, Michelle McKinley of the University of Oregon, and Jennifer Nedelsky of the University of Toronto. “The committee was particularly struck by Sharfstein’s literary touch; legal ideas recur as motifs throughout the narrative, lending an especially graceful tone to the book. Sharfstein’s subjects come alive through his adept recruitment of primary sources, and his willingness to let them speak for themselves as much as the records permit pairs wonderfully with his novelistic style.”
“Many of my favorite works of legal history—books that I teach and that have continually inspired me—have been awarded the Hurst Prize,” said Sharfstein. “To see The Invisible Line in this distinguished company is such a tremendous honor. It’s very humbling.”
In 2012, Sharfstein has also won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for The Invisible Line as well as the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Paper Prize for his article, “Atrocity, Entitlement and Personhood in Property,” (98 Virginia Law Review 635, 2012). He received a $50,000 Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship from the Fletcher Foundation in 2011, and is using that award to chronicle a group of Southern lawyers who argued against integration in courts during the decade following the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Sharfstein is an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt, where he teaches Property Law as well as courses in legal history. In 2012, he was honored with the student-selected Hall-Hartman Award for Outstanding Teaching for his seminar, The Legal History of Race in the United States. He joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2007.
