Continuing with our notices of the awards, prizes, and fellowships announced at the recent meeting of the American Society for Legal History, we turn now to the Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in a Global Perspective. About this award:
The Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in
Global Perspective will honor exceptional dissertations on topics in
European legal history in global perspective and presented for PhD or
JSD degrees awarded in the previous calendar year. Topics may include
European legal interactions with people or places outside Europe, legal
processes spanning Europe and other world regions, and developments in
legal theory closely related to imperial, transnational, or
trans-regional trends.
The 2025 award when to two scholars: Vladislav Lilić, for “Empire of States: Law and International Order in Ottoman Europe, c. 1830-1912.” (Vanderbilt University, 2024) and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín, for “‘Architects of the Better
World’: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of International Order
(1919-1998),” (Graduate Institute of International and Development
Studies, 2024).
The citation for Lilić’s”Empire of States”:
Vladislav Lilić’s superb dissertation, “Empire of States: Law and
International Order in Ottoman Europe, c. 1830-1912,” makes a strikingly
original contribution to European and global legal history by
supplanting familiar narratives of Balkan state formation. The
dissertation traces how small Balkan states took shape not through the
influence of surging nationalism but through conflicts conducted in the
medium of imperial law. Lilić demonstrates that in Montenegro and Serbia
varied sets of legal actors—from viziers and Ottoman officials to
pastoralists and journeymen—engaged in legal disputes that gradually
reset the coordinates of political belonging, property, and public
order. As a result, provincial states emerged within the empire before
featuring as states in the international order. The dissertation is
elegantly structured and based on extensive research in multiple
languages and archives, and it combines a deft narrative style with
nuanced interventions in the literature on European sovereignty and
legal pluralism in global perspective.
The citation for Quiroga-Villamarín’s “‘Architects of the Better
World’”:
Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín’s outstanding dissertation, “‘Architects
of the Better World’: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of
International Order (1919–1998),” constitutes a seminal contribution to
both the history of international law and global legal history. By
tracing what he designates as the “international parliamentary complex”
during international law’s move to institutions in the short twentieth
century (1919–1998), Quiroga-Villamarín reconstructs the formation of
international parliaments from interwar Geneva to the conclusion of the
Cold War. Attending to architectural and material templates originating
in Europe and their subsequent translations across continents, the
dissertation spatializes history and historicizes space, shifting the
perspective from figurative “architectures” to tangible built
environments. The conceptual framework proves particularly innovative,
foregrounding how architecture simultaneously mirrored and enabled
aspirations of global order. Drawing on extensive archival research in
Europe, Africa, and the Americas, it situates its argument within a
rigorous methodological apparatus and advances its findings in elegant
and compelling prose.
Congratulations to both winners!
— Karen Tani