Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers—is proud to announce the winners of its 2024 awards, which honor excellence in legal writing and scholarship. These prestigious awards recognize authors whose work exemplifies the clarity, creativity, and precision that Scribes promotes in the legal profession.
Law Review Awards
Scribes presents awards annually to the best student-written articles. For 2023-2024, Christopher A.G. LoCascio received First Place for his article, The Healthcure System: A Regional Accountable Care Model to Remedy Healthcare’s Pricing Problem, 96 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1251 (2023). LoCascio, a University of Southern California Gould School of Law graduate, practices with Kirkland & Ellis, LLP in Los Angeles.
Karen J. Kukla, an Indiana University Mauer School of Law graduate, received Second Place for her article, Direct to Consumer or Direct to All: Home DNA Tests and Lack of Privacy Regulations in the United States, 13 IP Theory 31 (2023). Kukla practices with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago and is about to begin a federal judicial clerkship.
The three other finalists for this category were University of Iowa alum Christopher A. Brown (Why Whistleblowing Walter May Be Helping the SEC Violate the First Amendment, 49 J. Corp. L. 167 (2023)), University of Michigan graduate Aviva K. Diamond (The Impact of Post-Dobbs Abortion Bans on Prenatal Tort Claims, 122 Mich. L. Rev. 373 (2023)), and Washington & Lee alum Rachel Silver (A Miscarriage of Justice: How Femtech Apps and Fog Data Evade Fourth Amendment Privacy Protections, 30 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 141 (2023)).
Book Award
In the Book Award category, which honors the best nonfiction legal book of the year, Dylan Penningroth’s Before the Movement (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023) was named the winner. Professor Penningroth is a Professor of Law and the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History at the University of California Berkeley, where he also serves as Associate Dean for the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy/Legal Studies. Scribes will host a virtual CLE program on February 28, 2025, featuring a conversation with Professor Penningroth about his winning entry.
Scribes awarded Honorable Mentions to Edward J. Larson for American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023) and H. Jefferson Powell for The Practice of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Darby Dickerson, Scribes’s President and President & Dean of Southwestern Law School, praised this year’s award recipients: “These authors have made extraordinary contributions to legal writing and scholarship. Their work exemplifies the clarity and creativity that Scribes seeks to foster in the legal profession. We are proud to honor them and hope their achievements inspire others.”
Other Awards
Scribes presented the Joseph Kimble Distinguished Service Award to Charles Dewey Cole, Jr., to recognize his exceptional contributions to legal writing and service to Scribes. Cole served on the Scribes board for more than two decades and recently took emeritus status. He is a trial and appellate lawyer with Newman Myers Kreines Harris, P.C. in New York City, where he supervises the firm’s federal court practice.
The outgoing Scribes President, Justice (Ret.) John Browning, a Distinguished Jurist-in-Residence at Faulkner University’s Jones School of Law and a former justice on Texas’s Fifth Court of Appeals, received the President’s Gavel for his dedicated service as president from 2022 to 2024.
For more information about Scribes awards, membership, and upcoming events, visit www.scribes.org.