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(9) Promotion and Support of Research
The National Equal Justice Library seeks to encourage as well
as facilitate more and better research on the general subject of equal justice
for lower income people and groups. We realize the very existence of the
collections we are assembling will go a long way in that direction by making
this essential information so accessible to scholars. To further the same
purpose, however, the NEJL already has inaugurated an award program we expect
will raise the profile of research in this field. The Library regularly make two
awards -- The Reginald Heber Smith Book Award and the Edgar and Jean
Cahn Article Award. It also confers a special award — the John Bradway
Award — on a occasional basis to publications that advance the goal of
equal justice although not directly related to that field.
The Library relies on a prestigious independent selection
committee to pick the Smith, Cahn, and Bradway award winners.
The first cycle of awards (for 1998-1999) was selected
by a committee consisting of Dean Gerald Caplan of McGeorge Law School
(committee chair), and professors Susan Bennett (American University), Stewart
Macaulay (University of Wisconsin), Victor Rosenblum (Northwestern),
and Lucie White (Harvard), as well as Gerry Singsen who combined
academic and practical experience in the legal services field.
The second cycle of awardees (2000-2001) is being
chosen by a new committee composed of Professors Larry Cata Backer
(Penn State), Thomas Davis (Arizona State), Sylvia Ann Law
(New York University), Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (University of New
Mexico), Marjorie McDiarmid (West Virginia University), and Eric
Wright (Santa Clara).
Since these are the first awards to be presented for
publications on the subject of equal access to justice, any book or article
published during the 20th Century was eligible for consideration. The 1998-1999
Awardees were:
THE REGINALD HEBER SMITH BOOK AWARDS
Melissa Fay Greene, Praying
for Sheetrock (New York: Ballantine, 1991)
Joel Handler, Howard Erlanger, and
Elizabeth Jane Hollander, Lawyers
and the Pursuit of Legal Rights (New York: Academic Press,
1978)
THE EDGAR AND JEAN CAHN ARTICLE AWARDS
Marc Galanter, Why the “Haves” Come Out
Ahead, 9 Law and Society Review 95 (1974) [for the outstanding article
published before 1980].
Richard Abel, Law Without Politics: Legal Aid
Under Advanced Capitalism, 32 UCLA Law Review 474 (1985) [for the
outstanding article published in the 1980’s].
Marc Feldman, Political Lessons: Legal Services
for the Poor, 83 Georgetown Law Journal 1529 (1995) [for the outstanding
article published in the 1990’s].
THE JOHN BRADWAY AWARD
Gary Bellow and Beatrice Moulton, The
Lawyering Process (New York: Foundation Press, 1981)
In the future, the NEJL also plans to sponsor a visiting
scholar program and to publish either an annual journal or a periodical
devoted to the organization, delivery, and financing of equal justice. There is
a special need for such a journal since at this time there is no publication
dedicated to research about this subject. As envisioned, this journal will not
only publish articles and book reviews written especially for it, but will
contain abstracts of relevant articles appearing in other journals (including
those appearing in foreign publications and in languages other than English) and
regular summaries of important developments and comparative statistics from
around the world.
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