National association honors historian for service

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—A Western Michigan historian is the first woman to receive a prestigious service award from the American Society for Legal History.

Dr. Sally Hadden, associate professor of history, received the Craig Joyce Medal at the society's annual meeting in November for her long and outstanding service to the organization. Awarded only four times until now, the medal is presented on an occasional basis to "acknowledge and honor extraordinary and sustained volunteer service to the society."

Hadden has been a member of the society since 1989. She has served on five committees, chairing two; been elected to the board of directors; and after nine years, just completed her third term as national secretary.

At WMU, she teaches, serves as director of graduate studies for her department, and writes about as well as researches law and history in early America. Hadden also is working on two new writing projects: a monograph on 18-century lawyers in colonial American cities and a study of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court.

She previously completed a monograph titled "Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas" and co-edited or co-authored "Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History," "A Companion to American Legal History" and "Traveling the Beaten Path: Charles Tait's Charges to Federal Grand Juries, 1822-1825."

About the society

The American Society for Legal History is an international academic organization dedicated to fostering scholarship and teaching in the many fields of legal history around the world. It was founded in 1956 to foster interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching in the broad field of legal history.