ASLH Names Dorsett Honorary Fellow

[Among the events at last weekend's annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History in New Orleans was the announcement of three new Honorary Fellows of the Society.  As the ASLH website explains: "Election as an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History is the highest honor the Society can confer. It recognizes distinguished historians whose scholarship has shaped the broad discipline of legal history and influenced the work of others. Honorary Fellows are the scholars we admire, whom we aspire to emulate, and on whose shoulders we stand." 

[Here is the citation for the first of the three, a frequent correspondent with LHB, Shaunnagh Dorsett. It was read by Amalia D. Kessler, Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Stanford Law School.  DRE]

--The Society is pleased to welcome as an Honorary Fellow Shaunnagh Dorsett, Distinguished Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, and Faculty Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington.  

--Professor Dorsett is a preeminent and influential scholar in the relatively young field of legal history in Australia and New Zealand.

--Professor Dorsett received a B.A. and LL.B. with Honours from the University of Tasmania in 1990 and an LL.M. from the University of Calgary in 1996.  

--In 2005 she received her Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales for her thesis, "Thinking Jurisdictionally: A Genealogy of Native Title."  

--She began her teaching career at Griffith University, where she rose to Senior Lecturer on the Faculty of Law before moving to the Faculty of Law of Victoria University of Wellington in 2004, first as Senior Lecturer, then as Reader-in-Law.  

--Upon joining the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, in 2010, she continued her affiliation with the Faculty of Law at Victoria University as a Faculty Research Fellow.

--Across three books, two co-edited volumes of essays, and over forty articles and book chapters, Professor Dorsett has opened areas of study and speculation where no one had gone before, becoming a vital force in the advancement of Australasian legal history.  

--Her work is widely admired and is recognized internationally.  

--She has made major scholarly contributions to the legal history of 19th-century New Zealand and Australia, the wider legal history of the British Empire, and the jurisprudence of jurisdiction.  

--She has added enormously to our knowledge of the legal history of settler societies in the British diaspora, with particular reference to the encounter between Indigenous law and European law.  

--She writes about Australasia, Fiji, the Cape Colony, Gibraltar, and Canada.  

--Her work is read avidly by those who research settler-indigenous relations around the world, not only for its insights, but also for its method and style.  

--In her most recent book-Juridical Encounters: Maori and the Colonial Courts 1840-1852, published in 2017-Professor Dorsett combined an authoritative grasp of the jurisprudence of jurisdiction with exceptional empirical research to illuminate the wider process of colonization.  

--The book received awards from the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand and the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society (2018).  

--It also was a finalist for the Ernest Scott Prize, awarded by the University of Melbourne to the book judged the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia or New Zealand,

--Professor Dorsett is widely regarded as a brilliant mentor.  

--She is a superb communicator who is much in demand as a keynote speaker in the English-speaking world.  

--She is known for her tireless activity in organizing conferences, workshops, and colloquia, serving on editorial boards and prize committees, and creating and sustaining a worldwide network of scholars.  

--As one scholar and current Honorary Fellow of the Society told us, Professor Dorsett "stands at the very peak of Australasian engagement with legal history."  

--No one has contributed more in recent years to the field of legal history in Australia and New Zealand.  

--Through her scholarship and her mentorship and encouragement of other scholars, Professor Dorsett is, in the words of another scholar and current Honorary Fellow, truly "a vital force in the advancement of Australasian legal history."

--The scholars we elect as Honorary Fellows are distinguished exemplars who are as committed to building a future for their fields as they are to studying the past.  

--Professor Shaunnagh Dorsett is a worthy addition to that company.

--We are pleased and honored to welcome her as an Honorary Fellow of the Society.