Newsmakers

Desan Receives Legal History Award

The American Society for Legal History has awarded Professor of Law Christine Desan the Erwin C. Surrency Prize for the best article published in volume 16 of the Law and History Review.

The Society honored Desan for her article titled, “Remaking Constitutional Tradition at the Margin of Empire: The Creation of Legislative Adjudication in Colonial New York.” Desan split the prize with Rice University Assistant Professor of History Michael Willrich. The award was presented at the Society’s annual conference, which was held Oct. 22-24 in Toronto, Canada.

The Prize Committee praised Desan for providing “a major contribution to the legal history literature by provoking important questions about the implications of a dramatic episode of legislative activity that crossed what we now regard to be the well-settled boundaries of legislative function.”

Desan was appointed assistant professor of law in 1992 and professor of law in 1998. Her courses include Civil Procedure; Legal History: Law, Politics, and Popular Sovereignty in Early Constitutional History; and Legal History: Constitutional History, Colonial Period to the Early Republic.

Small Elected President of Harvard Law Review

The Harvard Law Review has elected second-year student Anne K. Small as its 114th president. Small was elected Feb. 6 from a slate of eight candidates, after twelve hours of debate. Small is the fifth woman to serve as president of the Law Review. The first woman president, Susan Estrich, was elected in 1976.

A native of New York City, Small graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and International Studies. In 1999, Small was awarded the Joshua Sears Prize for academic achievement in her first year of law school.

The Harvard Law Review is a student-edited journal founded in 1887 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. It has the largest circulation of any law journal in the world.

Builders Recognized for KSG Lecture Hall

Gloucester Builders Inc., of Charlestown, Mass., recently received the Prism Award for Best Commercial Project by the Builders’ Association of Greater Boston for its construction of the Executive Education Lecture Hall at the Kennedy School of Government.

According to Frank Murphy of Gloucester Builders, the firm was recognized for its innovative use of information technology. The lecture hall features a wide range of audio and video conferencing capabilities, microphones at each seat, network connectivity and an interface which allows any student to project a screen from a laptop computer to the main video screen. Architectural Resources of Cambridge designed the project.