Lifetime-Achievement Award

Scribes’ Lifetime-Achievement Award honors those who have had a lasting impact on legal writing through their jurisprudence, scholarship, and commentary.

Recipients*

2025 Lisa Blatt, Williams & Connolly, Chair, Supreme Court and Appellate Practice

2022 William C. Burton, Founder and Chairman of the Burton Awards Program and author of Burton’s Legal Thesaurus

2020 Professor Bryan A. Garner, Author of Garner’s Modern English Usage and Editor of Black’s Law Dictionary

2019 The Honorable Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States

2018 The Honorable Diane Wood, Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

2017 The Honorable Robert Henry, President, Oklahoma City University

2016  The Honorable Frank Easterbrook & The Honorable Richard Posner, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

2015  The Right Honorable the Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, 2000 to 2005

2012  The Honorable John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States

2010  Professor Emeritus Richard C. Wydick, University of California, Davis, School of Law

2009  The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States

2008  The Honorable Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States

2004  The Honorable Richard Sheppard Arnold, Chief Judge United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

2002  The Honorable Guido Calabresi, Judge United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

*No award was issued in 2003, 2005–2007, 2011, 2013–2014, or 2021, 2023–2024.