IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize

The IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize was established in spring 2007 by alumnus Roy C. Palmer '62 and his wife, Susan M. Palmer, to honor a work of scholarship exploring the tension between civil liberties and national security in contemporary American society.

The $10,000 prize is designed to encourage and reward public debate among scholars on current issues affecting the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments throughout the world. (View announcement of 2012 prize winner.)

Roy Palmer, a lawyer and real estate developer, is a 1962 honors graduate of Chicago-Kent and a member of its board of overseers. He and his wife, Susan, active in numerous civic, social and philanthropic organizations, are the recipients of the 1997 Outstanding Individual Philanthropist Award of the National Society of Fundraising Executives.

In 2006, the Palmers pledged a $1 million gift to Chicago-Kent earmarked to support the expansion of the law school's campus, located in a rapidly developing area of downtown Chicago. The Palmers reside in Sarasota, Florida.

Past winners of the Palmer Prize

2012

Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy (Oxford University Press 2011), by Brooklyn Law School professor and national ACLU president Susan N. Herman

2011

Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs (Yale University Press 2011), by George Washington University Law School professor Laura A. Dickinson

2010

Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists: Lessons from the War on Terrorism (The MIT Press 2010), by Harvard Law School professors Gabriella Blum and Philip B. Heymann

2009

Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times (Harvard University Press 2009), by Professor Scott M. Matheson, Jr., of University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

2008

Bad Advice: Bush's Lawyers in the War on Terror (University Press of Kansas 2009), by University of Colorado Law School professor Harold H. Bruff

2007

Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (The New Press 2007), by Georgetown University law professor David D. Cole and University of Pittsburgh School of Law professor Jules L. Lobel