The Langum Charitable Trust is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2007 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History is Bruce J. Dierenfield for his book, The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America, published by the University Press of Kansas. This prize is awarded annually to the best work of American legal history or American legal biography published by a university press, which is accessible to the educated general public, rooted in sound scholarship, and with themes that touch upon matters of general concern to the American public, past or present.

Dierenfield will receive his award, which carries a stipend of $1,000, in a ceremony held in the Arrington Auditorium of the central branch of the Birmingham Public Library at 4:00PM, March 8, 2008. Professor Dierenfield will make a few remarks concerning his writing of the book and will respond to questions. A reception will follow. The event is free and the public is warmly invited.

A major issue roiling the American public since the 1960s has been the appropriateness and constitutionality of organized prayers in the American public schools. In Engel v. Vitale [1962] the United States Supreme Court struck down a bland prayer without explicit Christian reference that New York State law permitted and a local school district required students recite as a part of the daily opening exercises. In Engel, its first entry into the school prayer issue, the Court held that even with opt-out provisions that permitted individual students to remain silent or leave the room, the prayer violated the interpretation of the First Amendment that had created a “wall of separation” between church and state. The decision caused great consternation. Adherents of public prayers bemoaned their withdrawal in schools as fostering juvenile delinquency, even communism, and destroying the traditional understanding and privileged place of the Christian religion in the nation. Some with such views denounced the ACLU, atheists, Jews, and others they thought were fomenting trouble by bringing lawsuits based on the First Amendment to challenge prayer in schools.

Dierenfield has done a wonderful job of lucidly describing this controversy and the resulting litigation. Although the heart of the book is the Engel case, he also traces the entire history of the American church and state relationship, with particular reference to religious activity in schools, including Bible reading, student-led prayer, moments of silence, student pre and post-school religious activities within the school grounds, as well as organized prayers and Constitutional amendments designed to restore them.

The book is calm in tone and presents all sides to the controversies. Dierenfield conducted numerous interviews with the Engel parties, lawyers, judge, students, teachers, and school officials, as well as the participants of other court battles over school prayer. As a result of these interviews he is able to describe the impact of the litigation on the individuals directly involved. These were generally vicious taunts and reprisals heaped on the plaintiffs and their families by the advocates of public Christian prayer.

As is true with all of the other books in the Kansas series, Landmark Law Cases and American Society, Dierenfield’s Battle over School Prayer, is not footnoted. However, the thorough scholarship is clearly evident, and the book has an excellent bibliographic essay and a good, useable index. – DJL, Sr.

The awards are sponsored jointly by the Friends of the Birmingham Public Library and the Langum Project For Historical Literature.

Beginning this year, 2008, the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction will be awarded separately, during Centrum Foundation’s Port Townsend Writers’ Conference in July.

For further information please contact:

David J. Langum, Sr. Director

The Langum Charitable Trust

langumtrust@gmail.com

(205)726-2424

Previous winners list

David J. Langum, Sr. founded the Langum Project for Historical Literature in 2001 out of a conviction that far too many historians today write only for each other, and that there is a need to make the rich history of America, in both her colonial and national periods, accessible to the educated general public. It seeks to encourage this sort of writing by awarding two annual prizes of $1,000 apiece for the best books published by university or small presses in the category of American historical fiction ("both excellent fiction and excellent history that to some extent delineates between the two") and in the category of American legal history or legally related biography ("rooted in sound scholarship, accessible to the education general reader, and with themes that touch upon matters of general concern to the American public, past or present"). The Project is now a division of Langum Charitable Trust, a private operating foundation with 501(c)(3) status.