Now, Kaufman--a specialist in legal ethics--plans to return to more familiar territory.

"It's certainly going to be my only full-length biography," Kaufman said. "I'm going to turn back to other things I'm interested in doing."

The Scribes' "Best Law Book" award comes with no monetary stipend, but Kaufman--who said he was "pleased" by the honor--has won recognition from several other sources as well.

He won an award from the Supreme Court Historical Society, which did come with a stipend, on the condition that he give a talk in the Supreme Court's courtroom. The book also won a joint award from the New York State Archives and New York Board of Regents.

Scribes selected the book for the best law book honor from over 60 works submitted by publishers on all variety of legal subjects, from biographies to histories to textbooks and legal treatises.

"We had a committee of maybe five of us who read through, over a period of months, each of the entries," Hyman said.

Scribes gave honorable mention awards to Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights and Allan Farnsworth's Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions, both published by Yale University Press.