The Holt Prize
The Holt Prize
Entries for 2026 Holt Prize will open on 1 April 2026. The deadline for submissions is 1 July 2026. To lodge your entry please complete the entry form and submit an anonymised PDF version of your manuscript.
The judges for this year’s prize are The Honourable John Basten, Professor Lisa Burton Crawford and Jessica Hudson.
The Holt Prize is a biennial publishing award which recognises excellence in unpublished legal works of an academic or practical nature. The competition is open to first-time authors and the winner is awarded a $12,000 cash prize and a publishing contract with The Federation Press.
The prize is named after the late Christopher Holt, co-founder of The Federation Press, who gave many academics their first publishing opportunity. It was awarded for the first time in 2015.
List of previous winners and judges
2024: The joint winners were Vannessa Ho, Forum Choices in Transnational Intellectual Property Litigation and Julian R. Murphy, Constitutionally Protective Statutory Interpretation.
The judges for 2024 were The Hon James Allsop AC, Elizabeth Collins SC and Emeritus Professor Barbara McDonald
2021: William Isdale, Compensation for Native Title
The judges for 2021 were The Hon Susan Crennan AC QC, Emeritus Professor Mark Aronson and Perry Herzfeld SC.
2019: Shipra Chordia, Proportionality in Australian Constitutional Law
The judges for 2019 were The Hon Professor William Gummow AC, The Hon Justice Alan Robertson and Ruth Higgins SC.
2017: Dylan Lino, Constitutional Recognition: First Peoples and the Australian Settler State
The judges for 2017 were The Hon Justice Virginia Bell AC, The Hon Keith Mason AC QC and Professor George Williams AO.
2015: The joint winners were Dr Giovanni Di Lieto, Migrant Labour Law: Unfolding Justice at Work in Free Markets and Dr Scott Stephenson, From Dialog to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism.
In 2015, The Federation Press also published the outstanding works of these finalists: Dr Yee-Fui Ng, Ministerial Advisers in Australia: The Modern Legal Context and Dr James Watson, The Origins of the Duty to Account.
The judges for 2015 were Justice Stephen Gageler, Neil Williams SC and Professor Andrew Lynch.