The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Comparative Law has awarded Associate Professor Pamela Bookman with the 2021 Mark Tushnet Prize for her article, “The Adjudication Business,” which appeared in the 45th volume of the Yale Journal of International Law this year.
Bookman’s winning article examines the emergence of various English-language international commercial courts around the world. Many scholars have described these recently created courts as in competition with one another and with arbitration, but Bookman believes that most current accounts oversimplify their reasons for existence. “The Adjudication Business” delves into the reasoning behind creating these international courts, the possible criteria for their success, and the similarities between litigation and arbitration–typically considered to be opposites in the U.S.
The Mark Tushnet Prize, now in its second year, is open to any non-tenured scholars—from tenure-track professors to doctoral candidates—at any AALS member institution for a scholarly article that the judges deem a vital contribution to the study of comparative law. For consideration in this year’s judging, the articles must have been published in an academic journal between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020.
The award honors Mark Tushnet, a former AALS president and the former William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a position from which he retired in June of this year. Tushnet also served as a former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, and he is renowned for his expertise in constitutional law and theory.
“I’m so honored to be recognized by the AALS Comparative Law Section,” said Bookman upon receiving the award. “My hope is that the paper brings more attention—especially in the US—to the evolving dynamics of international commercial dispute resolution around the world, and the domestic and international forces that lead to judicial innovation in different states. I am especially thankful to those who helped me to think through these ideas and encouraged me to develop and publish this article.”