Thanks to some deep generosity, The Fully Informed Jury Association is proud to announce the inaugural Jury Conscience History Prize, a $2,000 award for graduate and advanced undergraduate scholarship on the history of jury independence and conscientious acquittal in American or English legal history.
The Prize invites papers that engage jury conscience as a historical subject---in a specific era, region, case, or demographic context. We are especially interested in work that draws new connections between historical resistance---like refusal to allow law enforcement to deport escaped slaves back to the south---and present activist struggles.
Eligibility:
Graduate students in history, American studies, political science, or legal history. Law students welcome but not required. Undergraduate seniors with faculty sponsorship eligible.
Example entry points:
- Jury nullification and the Fugitive Slave Act in a specific Northern city or state
- The role of race in Southern jury nullification of anti-lynching prosecutions and how that history has been used to discredit the broader doctrine
- Prohibition-era jury resistance and its relationship to the repeal movement
- Conscientious acquittal cases involving antiwar and civil rights activists in the 1960s–70s and how courts responded
- The origins and spread of anti-nullification jury instructions after Sparf v. United States (1895)
Award:
$2,000. Publication on FIJA.org with cross-publication potential.
Length:
6,000–20,000 words. Footnote citation style appropriate to discipline.
Deadline:
January 1st 2027.
Submission:
Email the submission as a pdf attachment (do not include your name within the body but on the filename of the pdf) to aji@fija.org under the heading JURY CONSCIENCE SUBMISSON
