Sutherland Prize for 2022, an annual award given for the best article on the legal history of Britain and/or the British Empire for “Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and its New World Empire.”
Srinivas Aravamudan Award (and honorable mention for the Clifford Prize) from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies in 2019 for
“Slavery, Sovereignty, and ‘Inheritable Blood,’” for an article that pushes the boundaries, conceptual and geographical, of Eighteenth Century Studies. American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2014-2015.
Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, 2015-present. .
Biennial Book Prize of the Order of the Coif for 2008, given by the Order of the Coif, the honor society of the Association of American Law schools for the book that “evidence[s] creative talent of the highest order” for By Birth or Consent.
J. Willard Hurst Prize for 2006, given by the Law and Society Association for the best book in sociolegal history published in 2005, for By Birth or Consent.
Cromwell Prize for 2006, given by the American Society for Legal History, for the best work in American Legal History by a junior scholar, for By Birth or Consent.
Douglass Adair Memorial Award for 2000, given by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the Claremont Graduate School, for the best article published in the William and Mary Quarterly in the past six years, for “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia.”
James L. Clifford Prize for 1998 for the best article on any aspect of eighteenth century culture, given by the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies for “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia.”
Best Article published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1997, as chosen by the board of editors, for “Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia.” Awarded by National Society, Daughters of Colonial Wars.
College of Humanities and Social Sciences Distinguished Research Award, North Carolina State University, 2008.
Jeffrey L. Hansen Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to the Graduate Students Association (UCLA), 1992.
Stewart Prize for “contributing greatly to sense of Community at Harvard College,” 1985.
Fellowships & Scholarships
Fellowships
William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Grant to support legal history to work on my book on “’Inheritable Blood’: Slavery & Sovereignty in Early America and the British Empire,” for Spring, 2021.
Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, May 2021.
Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, C. V. Starr Center for the American Experience, Washington
College, Fall, 2012.
National Humanities Center Fellowship, 2009-2010.
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2009-2010 (concurrent)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, 2008.
Scholarly Project Award, NC State, summer 2008.
Mellon Fellowship, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Spring, 2006.
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1997-98.
Digital Humanities Support:
NHPRC (National Historic Preservation & Records Commission) grant to support the development of a digital Humanities Project Slavery, Law, & Power, Dec. 2020 (for 2021), December 2021 (for 2022).
American Society for Legal History, grant to support website Slavery, Law, & Power, Nov. 2020.