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2021 yale law journal student-essay competition.

The Essays in this Collection won the fifth annual Yale Law Journal Student Essay Competition on emerging issues in employment and labor law. In Solidarity, Legitimacy, and the Janus Double Bind , J. Colin Bradley analyzes labor organizing and civic trust. In Unemployment Insurance for the Gig Economy , Benjamin Della Rocca proposes extending unemployment benefits to gig-economy workers.

Solidarity, Legitimacy, and the Janus Double Bind

Janus ’s failure to recognize a state interest in labor organizing contained a twofold mistake. Organizing develops a culture of civic trust. In turn, civic trust is necessary for citizens to accept the sorts of accommodations raised by conscience-based exemptions claims—like Janus’s—that the state m…

Unemployment Insurance for the Gig Economy

Historically, U.S. unemployment insurance has excluded workers lying outside the conventional employer/employee binary. That should change. This Essay argues for extending benefits to gig-economy workers, via structures fashioned after states’ existing unemployment programs. It grounds its argument …

Announcing the YLJ Academic Summer Grants Program

Announcing the editors of volume 134, announcing the first-year editors of volume 133, featured content, lock them™ up: holding transnational corporate human-rights abusers accountable, administrative law at a turning point, law and movements: clinical perspectives.

Writing Competition

The  Harvard Law Review  is composed of second- and third-year law students who are selected via a six-day writing competition at the end of each academic year. The Review strongly encourages all students to participate in the writing competition, which consists of two parts:

• Subcite: this portion, worth 50% of the competition score, requires students to perform a technical and substantive edit of an excerpt from an unpublished article
• Case Comment : this portion, also worth 50%, requires students to describe and analyze a recent case

The competition uses a closed universe of materials provided to all competition-takers; no additional outside research of any kind is allowed or required. The use of any form of Artificial Intelligence during the competition is also strictly prohibited.

Based on the competition, fifty-four second-year students are invited to join the Review each year, including:

• Twenty selected based solely on competition scores
• Seven (one from each 1L section) selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and first-year grades
• Three (from any section) selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and first-year grades
• Twenty-four selected through an anonymous holistic review (see below for details)

The  Review  is committed to a diverse and inclusive membership and encourages all students to participate in the writing competition. Harvard Law School students who are interested in joining the  Review  must write the competition at the end of their first year, even if they plan to take time off during law school or are pursuing a joint degree and plan to spend time at another graduate school.

Timeline & Resources

The 2024 Competition will take place from Sunday, May 12 to Saturday, May 18 . Writing competition tips and Q&A sessions will be held in early and mid-April.

Registration will open in April 2024. We expect to invite editors to join Volume 139 over the course of several days in late July. Orientation for new editors is scheduled for the week of July 22nd and will take place remotely. Volume 139 will resume a past practice of an in-person Orientation for half a day near the start of the Fall 2024 Semester. Editors are expected to be fully available during this time. In August, editors will have Law Review assignments, but these assignments can be completed simultaneously with other commitments (internships, events, travel, etc.).

For more information about the competition, the following resources are available:

• The 2024 Application and Information Packet . The application information packet is designed to provide some specific guidance about approaching the case comment and subcite portions of the competition. Please note that the sample competition submissions included in the packet are merely representative and are by no means definitive examples.
• Tips Session and Q&A. Video of our April 1, 2024 writing competition tips session is available on our YouTube channel. The 2024 subcite Q & A session will be available in mid-April. This questions and answers document summarizes the Q&A portion of the April 13, 2023 session.
• Factsheet: This document responds to common questions and concerns we have heard.
• Sample Schedules: This includes a variety of writing competition schedules used by current editors.
• FAQ on Accommodations . See below for more information on disabilities and accommodations.

Competition & Membership Policies

Holistic consideration.

Applicants will have the opportunity to convey aspects of their identity which have led to the development of character qualities or unique abilities that can contribute to the Law Review , including but not limited to their racial or ethnic identity, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Applicants can do so by submitting an additional expository statement.  Statements will be considered by the Selection Committee only after grading of the competition has been completed. Statements will remain anonymous and will not be evaluated for quality of writing or editing, nor will they be assigned a numerical score.

Applicants are welcome to draft their expository statements before the competition week begins, and the prompt for the 200-word statement is as follows:

“You are strongly encouraged to use the space below to submit a typed expository statement of no more than 200 words. This statement may identify and describe aspects of your identity which have impacted your development of certain character qualities or unique abilities that can serve as an asset to the Law Review and are not fully captured by the categories on the previous page, including, but not limited to, racial or ethnic identity, socioeconomic background, disability (physical, intellectual, cognitive/ neurological, psychiatric, sensory, developmental, or other), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, country of origin or international status, religious identity or expression, undergraduate institution(s), age, academic or career trajectory prior to law school, military status, cultural background, or parental/caretaker status. Additionally or alternatively, you may use this statement to identify and describe areas of academic or scholarly interest, career goals, or any other element of your identity that you would bring to your work on the Law Review .

Statements will be considered only after grading of the subcite and case comment sections of the competition has been completed. Statements will not be evaluated for quality of writing or editing, nor will they be assigned a numerical score. No applicant will be penalized in any way for not submitting an optional statement, and all optional statements are completely confidential.”

Deferral & Leave

Harvard Law Review will invite students to join Vol. 139 in mid-July. Students invited to join Vol. 138 who are taking a full-year leave of absence from HLS will be allowed to defer their membership in Law Review for the year. They may then join the Law Review as members of Vol. 140 in fall 2025 and serve as editors for two years. Editors typically serve for two full academic years to ensure ample time for training, acclimation to their roles on the Review , and opportunities to make collective decisions about our work.

Students invited to join Vol. 139 who are taking a fall-semester leave of absence from HLS are encouraged to still join as editors with Vol. 139. If joining with Vol. 139, editors will be expected to complete Law Review work during the fall, even though they are on leave from HLS. They will then serve as editors for two years. Alternatively, students taking a one-semester leave may wait to join until fall of the following year (fall 2025); in that case, they will have no Law Review obligations during the 2024-2025 academic year and will participate as Law Review editors for a single year.

Transfer Students

Prospective transfer students may take the competition at the same time as Harvard Law School 1Ls. Prospective transfer students are selected on the same anonymous grading basis as Harvard 1Ls and are eligible for 44 of the spots on the Review (in other words, all spots besides the 10 allotted to Harvard 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). Prospective transfer students may submit an anonymized, unofficial transcript when their 1L grades are released if they would like their grades to be considered in the Law Review ’s holistic review process. The Review ’s membership decisions do not affect the admissions decisions of Harvard Law School.

Recognizing that the competition schedule poses unique challenges to prospective transfer applicants, the Review also allows transfer students to take the competition at the end of their 2L year. Up to four spots are available for such students. However, no student may attempt the competition more than once, and this option is only available to transfer students who did not previously take the competition. Like prospective transfer students, rising third-year students may submit their grades, but they will not be eligible for the 10 slots that incorporate first-year grades.

Prospective 1L transfer students should email [email protected] for information about registering.

SJD Students

SJD students at Harvard Law School may serve as editors of the Law Review . To join, SJDs take the same writing competition as JD students and are eligible for 44 of the editorial positions (all spots besides those allotted to JD 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). SJDs should take the competition only if they are certain they have at least two years remaining in their program of study. Additionally, as with all candidates, SJDs are permitted to participate in the writing competition only once.

Disabilities & Accommodations

The Harvard Law Review is firmly committed to providing accommodations for students with disabilities and handles requests on a case-by-case basis. The Law Review is an independent entity and thus has its own accommodations system separate from Harvard Law School’s Dean of Students Office.

Accommodations requests can be submitted between Monday, March 11th and Friday, April 12th and will be processed on a rolling basis. Students are strongly encouraged to submit their accommodation requests as soon as possible even if they are not yet certain they will take the competition. Please see our answers to FAQ on accommodations to learn more about what documentation is needed.

The Law Review strives to keep information regarding disabilities and accommodations as confidential as possible. Nothing about your accommodations application or your receipt of accommodations will be part of the Competition entry that is considered in the selection process. All Competition grading is doubly anonymized. Jennifer Heath, a non-student HLR staff member manages the logistics related to our accommodations process, and accommodations recommendations to the Law Review are made by our testing consultant, Dr. Loring Brinckerhoff.

2021 Student Essay Competition Winner

The Chinese Exclusion Cases and Policing in the Fourth Amendment–Free Zone

By   trillium chang   on   september 16, 2021.

The Chinese Exclusion Cases created a world in which an entire class of noncitizens could be deported or excluded from the United States. Today, the ghost of the Chinese Exclusion Cases is still alive and well, interwoven into the lives of many citizens and noncitizens in the United States. Because of the Plenary Power Doctrine sanctioned by the Chinese Exclusion Cases, two-thirds of the U.S. population live in a Fourth Amendment–free zone where border officials can conduct warrantless searches with impunity. Minority populations, in particular, are subject to constant policing and suspicion: an experience that would not have been foreign to Mr. Chae Chan Ping and Mr. Fong Yue Ting.

Volume 73 (2020-2021)

Priam’s Folly

United states v. alvarez and the fake news trojan horse, by   michael p. goodyear   on   september 16, 2021.

In legal scholarship over the past few years, fake news has been criticized and pondered repeatedly. In many ways, 2020 was a year of reckoning which brought to the fore the myriad problems posed by fake news. This Essay uses the context of 2020 to critique the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Alvarez , the latest Supreme Court ruling on the issue of whether fake news is protected by the First Amendment. Alvarez was decided in 2012, before the true dangers of fake news during the Internet Age were made fully apparent to the public. While Alvarez upheld the noble idea of truth ultimately triumphing in the marketplace of ideas, in reality, Alvarez opened the gates to the pernicious dangers posed by fake news.

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Harvard Human Rights Journal

Essay Contest: Winter 2021

Beyond the headlines: underrepresented topics in human rights.

For the Winter 2021 Essay Contest, the Harvard Human Rights Journal asked student authors from across Harvard University to think “beyond the headlines” and highlight issues in human rights that are not heavily featured in mainstream media. We received a variety of excellent submissions and selected two winning pieces, along with a select few honorable mentions. HHRJ is excited to share their insightful work over the following weeks. The list of winners and honorable mentions is below and all pieces were published on the Online Journal .

• Alev Erhan, JD ‘21 – When the Lines between the Public and Private Sectors Blur, Where do Victims Turn for Justice?
• Angel Gabriel Cabrera Silva, SJD Candidate ‘23, LLM ‘16 – At the Margins of the Indigenous Rights Ecosystem: Underrepresented Struggles for Self-Determination

Honorable Mentions

• Nathalie Gunasekera, JD ‘21 – The UN Must Deliver Long Overdue Remedies for the Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian Victims of Lead Poisoning in Kosovo
• Fatoumata Ouedrago, Harvard College ‘23 – The Plight of Talibé Children in Senegal
• Janna Ramadan, Harvard College ‘23 – Perpetuating Islamophobic Discrimination in the United States: Examining the Relationship Between News, Social Media, and Hate Crimes

Essay Contest Prompt

Submissions should be essays written about a topic in human rights that has not received recent attention in popular media. Relevant topics could be entirely unique, or they could be lesser-known dimensions of high-profile issues like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Submissions Accepted: January 1, 2021 – January 31, 2021

Winners will be announced soon afterwards and published in the Online Journal .

Submission Guidelines:

Qualifications : The essay contest is open to all current students at Harvard University, including undergraduate and graduate students.

Length Limitations: Submissions must be limited to a total length of 1,000–2,000 words, including footnotes.

Citation Format: All assertions should be cited. Please cite sources using footnotes rather than endnotes. Law students: ensure footnotes comply with The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation . Other students: please provide complete source information in the footnotes at a minimum.

Submission Process : Applicants should send their submission, in Microsoft Word format, from an official Harvard email address to HHRJ ( [email protected] ), along with a copy of a recent CV. The subject line of the email should include “HHRJ Essay Contest Submission” and the author’s name. The submissions window is open from January 1-31, 2021. Any submissions received outside of that window will not be considered.

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2021 Law Essay Writing Competition

Topic: “What is the role of the liability system in addressing Covid-19?”

Competition Details: The Hogan/Smoger Access to Justice Essay Competition is sponsored by R. Ben Hogan III of Hogan Law Office, PC, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Gerson H. Smoger of Smoger & Associates in Dallas, Texas, and Oakland, California. It is administered by Public Citizen.

Submission Deadline: Submissions must be emailed on or before Friday, April 30, 2021, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time, to Amanda Fleming at [email protected] . Papers emailed after this date will not be considered.

Eligibility: The competition is open to all current law students, post 2015 law graduates, and all masters of law students. Co-authored submissions are eligible; if selected, the co-authors will share the prize. Each submission must be an original, unpublished academic work, but simultaneous submissions will be accepted.

Format: Submissions must be emailed as Microsoft Word documents. They may be full-length law review articles or shorter academic essays and should use footnotes (not endnotes). The word count may be between 6,000 and 25,000 words, not including footnotes.

Judging Process: A panel of lawyers, including law professors and practitioners, will judge the submissions based on depth of analysis, quality of writing, originality, and thoroughness.

Winning Submission and Prizes: The winner will be notified by email. The winner will receive $5,000. Only one winning paper will be chosen and only one prize awarded.

Information: Please contact Amanda Fleming, [email protected] with any questions.

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Home › Essay Competition 2024 › Essay Competition Winners › 2021 Essay Competition Winner – Noor M

2021 Essay Competition Winner – Noor M

Table of Contents

Take a look at one of the winning entries to the Immerse Education Essay Competition from the Law category in 2021. Congratulations to all participants and in particular to those who won 100% scholarships!

What is an example of modern slavery?

by Noor M . Read Noor’s Scholarship Story Here.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln wrote “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” Americans today pride themselves on being the land of the free, yet in modern-day America slavery is not only real, but is well-established, extremely common, and flourishing in the American penal system. The origin of this state of affairs is complex and layered. America’s troubled history of slavery, classism, capitalism, and drug statutes warrant recognition in this lengthy discussion.

It is crucial to scrutinise America’s history with slavery and immigrant detention to understand injustice in the penal system, which incarcerates people of colour and immigrants on unjust grounds. These biases are conventional in America, however, the “war on drugs” campaign (initiated in 1971), has amplified these prejudices. When Nixon declared a war on drugs, policies throughout the US became harsher for all drug related crimes, the toll this takes on marginalised communities is immense. The rate at which minorities and Caucasian people abuse and carry drugs is indistinct. However, minority groups such as Latinos and African-Americans are subjected to inequitable customs, which often leads to forced prison labour, or modern slavery.

The 13th Amendment was established in 1865, and officially abolished slavery in the US, but drug offense policies beg to question, if people of colour are still enslaved through the prison system. Statistics prove that discrimination is rampant. African-Americans are six times more likely to be imprisoned for drug-related crimes. Furthermore, eighty percent of federal drug offense prisoners are Latino or African- American. The American penal system is deeply flawed, every 25 seconds someone is arrested for a drug- related crime.

At the same time, immigration detainees such as asylum seekers and migrants, are especially unsafe and are usually held in private prisons. Private prisons are owned by private companies, funded by the government to keep the prisons running. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) has set guidelines for what qualifies as forced labour in prisons. The guidelines involve consent forms, and wages and hours comparable to free employees. Prisoners should also be safeguarded from the threat of further penalty or

isolation, should they refuse to work. Evaluation of prisoners’ agreement to work should be supervised by a public authority, which isn’t done in private prisons.

Moreover, private facilities are not forced to show how their funds are used. The government annually pays private companies approximately $4 billion to operate. The funds depend on the number of prisoners, which gives the companies incentive to imprison more people than necessary. The companies then cut costs, exploit prisoners with forced labour, and rely on the prisoners to maintain the prison. The prisoners are usually paid around a dollar per day, and their welfare is not a priority. Recently America has relied on the prison industry for supplies during the pandemic, such as face-masks, and prisoners have faced repercussions upon resistance.

Perhaps, the most effected group is immigration detainees, over 70% of immigrant detainees are kept in private prisons, where they are exploited for cheap labour. Regardless of the group oppressed, modern slavery definitively exists, and exploits minorities, and we are far from winning the fight for freedom. This exploitative system is organized, well-established and is rightfully called the prison industry.

Bibliography

1 Wagner, Wendy Sawyer and Peter. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020.” Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020 | Prison Policy Initiative, Prison Policy Intiative, 24 Mar. 2020,

2 “Maldives Ratifies the Eight ILO Fundamental Conventions.” Maldives Ratifies the Eight ILO Fundamental Conventions, ILO (Internatioal Labour Organisation), 16 Jan. 2013,

3 “Private Prisons vs. Public Prisons.” Criminal Justice Programs, Criminal Justice Programs, 4 May 2021,

4 Taylor, Vanessa. “How Private Prisons Turned Criminal Justice into Big Business.” Mic, Mic, 25 Mar. 2021,

5 “What Is Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human

Trafficking).” What Is Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking), ILO (International Labour Organisation), 2012,

6 “Types of Prisons.” Crime Museum , Crime Museum , 23 June 2021.

Why Apply To The Immerse Education Essay Competition? 

Are you a highly motivated student aged 13-18? Have you ever wanted to experience studying at Cambridge or Oxford? 

The Immerse Education essay competition allows you the chance to submit an essay for the chance to be awarded a scholarship to the award-winning Cambridge summer school . 

How To Apply To The Immerse Education Essay Competition? 

The Immerse Education annual essay competition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win a scholarship to a Cambridge or Oxford summer school . 

If you’re aged 13-18 and you’re interested in applying to the Immerse Education essay competition then please visit our essay competition page for more details.

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Equality and Diversity Essay Competition 2021

Associated people

Kristin van Zwieten Professor of Law and Finance

The Faculty of Law is excited to announce its first ever Equality and Diversity Essay Competition in direct response to a request from students.

The essay competition is open to all undergraduate students in the Oxford Law Faculty, including those who were finalists in the 2020-2021 academic year.

Competition entries will be judged by a panel that will include Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE, Christopher Hare, and Kristin van Zwieten.

A prize of £750 will be awarded to the winner of the competition. This sum has been set with a view to enabling the prize-winner to take up opportunities for vacation work that might otherwise be inaccessible given travel and accommodation costs. The winning essay will also be published on the Oxford Law website.

A second prize of £250 will be awarded to the runner-up.

The judges may, at their discretion, select additional essays for special commendation. 

Your essay should develop an argument for equality and diversity-related law reform in a particular area. You should be specific about the reform(s) you advocate and why you advocate for it/them. Essays will be evaluated by reference to the clarity and cogency of the argument that is developed.

Word limit and style

Your essay must be no longer than 2,500 words, including all footnotes/endnotes.

Footnotes/endnotes should be in OSCOLA format. Bibliographies are not required.

Essays should be typed and submitted in Word format, using size 12 font.

Submission process

Essays must be submitted to  [email protected] by no later than midday on Monday 20 September 2021 . The winner and runner-up will be announced in the first two weeks of Michaelmas term.

Your covering email should include a statement that the essay you are submitting is entirely your own work, except for where otherwise indicated, as well as a statement of the word count (again, including footnotes/endnotes).

Essays will be anonymised before being given to any judge for evaluation.

Real World Questions essay competition 2021: Meet the winners

After the success of our first Real World Questions essay competition last year , we were delighted to expand the competition further in 2021. The competition was open to students from years 10-13, providing them with a chance to win £1,000 cash, a week’s work experience, a session with The University of Law’s Director of Employability and a laptop. We asked students to write about three hot topics facing the world of law, policing and business.

How do businesses stay positive in uncertain times?

Will Covid-19 change the way lawyers work in the future?

Does the UK justice system protect the public?

Today we’re talking to the inspirational winners of our Real World Questions essay competition 2021 to discuss their essays and their plans for the future.

By Cara Fielder . Published 10 November 2021.

Will Covid-19 change the way lawyers work in the future? – Sabrina Barnes

I currently study at Penglais School in Aberystwyth, and I discovered the Real World Questions essay competition when my Head of Sixth Form sent out an email about it at the start of the academic year.

My law essay was focused on the question - Will Covid-19 change the way lawyers work in the future? It looks at the different ways that the pandemic may affect the future of the legal profession, including current online court developments and the limitations of virtual hearings. It also looks at what happened in the past, specifically the 1918 influenza pandemic.

I have become interested in the legal profession in recent months and am considering pursuing a law degree or becoming a solicitor. I wanted to take the opportunity to enter a law competition so that I could find out more about the subject. The question was particularly interesting because I knew it would involve looking at the fundamentals of law, as well as the potential future of my work due to the pandemic. I also entered because, even though there was not much time left to enter, I did not want to miss an excellent chance to develop my knowledge and understanding of the law at an early stage.

I have no solid vision or goal for after completing my studies so far other than to be happy in my work and help others. I think I will study either history or law at a good university and become a teacher, lawyer or journalist.

When I got the email and call to be told the news I had won, I was in total disbelief. I honestly thought I had no chance of winning, and to be credited for my essay-writing skills and gain some amazing experience means a lot to me.

I definitely do not want to spend all of my prize money on clothes or sweets. I plan to keep it in a savings account, likely for university costs.

In five years, I hope to either pursue or graduate with a university degree that I enjoy and am proud of, then work to secure myself in a fulfilling career and have enjoyable life experiences.

My advice to anyone thinking of applying for a ULaw essay competition is to go for it. You never know when you may have such a fantastic opportunity again, and it gives you a unique, thorough insight into your subject of interest, which will benefit you even if you don’t win.

How do businesses stay positive in uncertain times?- Simone Banerjee

I study at Nonsuch High School for Girls in South London. I learnt about the Real World Questions essay competition in an email from our school’s Coordinator of Careers Education.

In my essay, I wrote about maintaining productivity and momentum in unpredictable times, using the current Covid-19 pandemic as an example. Additionally, I focused on the importance of teamwork and trust when a business is faced with difficult problems.

I was motivated to apply as I wanted to develop my essay writing skills. The question grabbed my attention because I thought it was extremely relevant to the current situation, and I wanted to explore how positivity and successful adaptation affect a business.

Winning the Real World Questions essay competition means a lot to me, as it has given me confidence in my essay writing skills. I was very pleased to win as it proved that I was able to get my point across clearly.

As Christmas is coming up, I will be spending some of my prize money buying presents for my friends and family. My cat’s first birthday is also in a few weeks, so I will make sure to buy her many treats. Apart from that, I will save the rest of the money.

In five years, I hope to be at a prestigious university studying economics. By the time I am twenty, I also wish to have a clearer idea of the career I want to pursue. Hopefully, I will have gained many more skills by then, which will allow me to pursue my chosen career successfully.

My advice to anyone thinking of applying for a ULaw essay competition is to think carefully about the question and refer to past and current events to back up your statements. I would also suggest spending time on structuring your essay well so that all your main points flow one after the other, producing a coherent piece of writing that stays focused on directly answering the question. If you are thinking of applying, definitely give it a go as it is a fantastic opportunity to extend your knowledge and potentially win prizes.

Does the UK Justice System Protect the Public?’ – Charlotte Smith

My name is Charlotte Smith and I study at Tormead School. I initially came across the Real World Questions Essay competition in an email sent to me by The University of Law. I’d like to study law at university, so I signed up to university mailing lists for regular updates.

The subject I chose for my essay was - Does the UK Justice System Protect the Public? This is obviously an extremely broad subject, so I narrowed down the title by picking three different areas of interest to write about. Eventually, I decided on how stop and search tactics can be damaging to society, the effectiveness of prison rehabilitation and the right to a fair trial.

The title - Does the UK Justice System protect the Public? was really intriguing to me. Before entering this essay competition, I knew very little about the criminal justice system and how the law operates. I wanted to explore the flaws and biases of the criminal justice system in a way that allowed me to guide my own research, and this essay competition seemed like the perfect opportunity. I thought the title was particularly apt following Sarah Everard’s murder, and the essay allowed me to highlight some of the issues raised by this tragic case.

I am currently in the Lower Sixth, so I am focused on my A-level studies and am planning to study law at university. I am also taking an extended project qualification (EPQ), which will hopefully broaden my understanding of particular legal topics.

I was honestly very shocked to have won the competition and was astonished when I found out. I have not had much experience with writing academic essays before and the prospect doesn’t seem so daunting now, which has made this experience invaluable. 

I plan to invest my money and put it towards my university living costs. Although that doesn’t sound very exciting, it will really help to reduce the amount of debt that I leave with.

In five years’ time I hope to have graduated from university and started training to qualify as a solicitor.

My advice to anyone who wants to enter this competition would be to allow the time to do plenty of research and try to find alternative points of view to your own. I found planning and structuring my essay before writing really helped me to clarify all my ideas and made the research process much easier. I am really looking forward to the work experience placement and talking to the Director of Employability at The University of Law as I think this will be very helpful for my future career. I would thoroughly recommend taking part in this competition as it’s been an amazing experience that’s helped me gain a lot of confidence in my academic ability.

Are you considering a career in law, business or policing? Take a look at our undergraduate courses to see how we can help you on your journey.

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• essay-competition-aug-2021-winner-announced

The Andrew Lockley Public Law Essay Competition Winner Announced

In 2021, our Public Law and Human Rights team held the first ever Andrew Lockley Public Law Essay Competition.

We launched the contest to give aspiring public law and human rights solicitors a platform to kick-start their careers in law.

After some brilliant entries to the contest, which is named after our first head of public law, we’re proud to present the winner.

Edward Platts was victorious for his well-structured and punchy entry, answering the competition question:

‘Will the government’s proposed changes to judicial review remedies improve citizens’ rights?’

Edward showed critical analysis of the provisions in the Judicial Review, Courts Bill and relevant case law. Throughout the entry, he set out his position on the suggested reforms.

Our judges really enjoyed the flow of the piece, and the broad research included in his essay.

Earlier this year, Edward completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in law, and will start a Legal Practice Course (LPC) in February 2022. Edward will start as a trainee solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills in August 2022.

Our public law partner Angela Jackman said: “It was a pleasure to read all of the entries. It was great to see how the next generation of lawyers engage with public law issues, which affect society’s fundamental civil liberties.”

Read Edward’s entry in full below.

Introduction

Following its manifesto pledge, the government commissioned a review of administrative law and a subsequent consultation, which has culminated in the ‘Judicial Review and Courts Bill’.  There had been widespread opposition from legal practitioners and academics, who feared swingeing attacks on the fundamental nature of judicial review. However, the reforms are less drastic than originally thought. The government’s proposed changes to judicial review include some minor procedural alterations and the abolition of the Cart jurisdiction, but most significantly, they propose to reform remedies. At present, courts have a suite of discretionary remedies at their disposal, as stipulated by the Senior Courts Act, s.29 and s.31, and the government wishes to expand on those capabilities.  This essay examines the two most salient changes to judicial review remedies: the introduction of suspended quashing orders and prospective-only quashing orders. It is argued that the proposed changes will not improve citizens’ rights, but rather, actively undermine them.  

Suspended Quashing Orders

A suspended quashing order (s.29A(1)(a)) would allow a period of time for the public body to rectify a defect before the order takes effect, and the defect would be treated as if legally valid for that period (s.29A(3)).

The chief advantage of suspended quashing orders is flexibility. From planning, where suspension would allow correction without project delays,  to public procurement, where statute only applies to ordinary quashing orders,  these changes offer ‘greater latitude’ to courts.  This is arguably beneficial to citizens; facilitating worthwhile infrastructure projects, and a further remedy against the government. It also has some practitioner support, and such orders could cultivate more efficient adherence to procedural requirements.

However, this ostensible flexibility comes at great cost - most notably a less rigorous remedial process, and a subversion of the efficiency of public law itself. Public bodies will be less concerned with overstepping their institutional competence if they face a mere suspended quashing order. The change would diminish the results of improper decision-making and ‘weaken remedies that already exist,’ resulting in poorer public practice, and an erosion of the potency of citizens’ rights. Ultimately, ‘justice could be circumvented,’ as rectification would deny a claimant’s putative recovery.  This enables the government to sidestep any real consequences or scrutiny.

Moreover, the Supreme Court has already established that courts are able to issue suspended quashing orders,  but generally should not, as they ‘obfuscate’ and ‘give the opposite impression’ of judgments.  Indeed, Graham observes that suspension is avoided due to outcomes of ‘significant unfairness to the parties.’  That these powers already exist and, if used, drastically undermine citizens’ rights, demonstrates the injustice of their legislative implementation. The government claim that in rejecting Ahmed, they are offering greater discretion to the courts.  But Ahmed ‘prioritised the rule of law over executive convenience,’ and these changes represent further overreach from an already powerful executive.  In the context of ubiquitous Henry VIII clauses and attacks on the HRA,  these “subtle” changes are particularly insidious, representing a wider trend of minimising government accountability.  

Prospective-Only Quashing Orders

The Bill proposes to allow courts to remove or limit any retrospective effects of quashing orders (s.29A(1)(b)), meaning all defective actions taken before the order would remain lawful (s.29A(4)).

The benefit of prospective-only quashing orders is that they are cheaper for the public purse. The order would result in a new, lawful scheme, but would prevent any back-dated claims, thus reducing public funds required to pay-out to potential claimants. It also brings a flexibility for claimants in surmounting the ‘House of Cards’ doctrine, allowing a greater chance of recovery without upsetting other judgments.

However, these benefits seem paltry when compared with the egregious impact the orders would have on citizens’ rights, and the rule of law itself. A prospective-only quashing order constitutes a flagrant denial of justice to citizens who have already suffered; both denying relief, and radically undermining the cardinal principle of universal access to justice. For example, if a prospective remedy had been given in RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the victims of unlawful discrimination would have received no damages, and ultimately no justice.  Limiting retrospectivity denies claimants redress against the might of the state (the very purpose of judicial review), and would have ‘a chilling effect on justice.’  It is ‘wrong in principle for such rights to be capable of being overridden by judicial discretion,’ but especially so with no representation in court.  It is yet more evidence of the government limiting accountability and reducing exposure to compensation.

Additionally, the changes problematise the separation of powers doctrine. Limiting retrospectivity would draw the courts into the ‘highly-contested policy space’ of considering the public coffers,   which constitutes ‘a real risk to the vindication of legal rights’ of citizens.  Thus, despite government aims of preventing courts from “playing politics”, the reforms have ironically lent a quasi-legislative power to the judiciary, which both undermines Parliament, and impacts the third-party rights of citizens.  However, this is seemingly irrelevant to the government, who wish to limit public accountability whatever the cost.  

In conclusion, the government’s changes to judicial review remedies will not improve citizens’ rights, but rather, drastically undermine them. Though the reforms ostensibly seem subtle, citizens’ private rights would be sabotaged, and their justice denied. The changes reduce government accountability, subvert the rule of law, and weaken the public law process. Moreover, the caselaw shows that courts already have these powers, but never use them due to the vast injustice they unleash on citizens.

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Gabriel Omoniyi, Tsebee Doowuese Win 2021 Edition of Adavize Alao Essay Competition

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Gabriel Temitope Omoniyi, an Associate at Lelaw Barristers and Solicitors, and Tsebee Dorcas Doowuese who submitted her entry as a student of the Nigerian Law School, have emerged winners of the Young Lawyers’ and Law Students’ categories of the 2021 Adavize Alao Essay Competition on Privacy and Data Protection respectively.

Omoniyi who practices in Lagos earned the top position for the young lawyers’ category with 42 points out a possible 50 while Doowuese led the law students’ category with 38 points.

The Adavize Alao Essay Competition on Privacy and Data Protection is held annually in honour of Lawyard co-founder, Adavize Alao, who passed on in August 2019 following a brief illness. Fondly remembered by many, Alao was passionate about privacy and data protection as an emerging area of practice and was completing a graduate degree in Data Protection & Intellectual Property at the University of Hertfordshire at the time of his demise. The university post-humously conferred the degree on Alao in December 2019.

The 2021 edition of the essay competition commenced on August 16, 2021 and is the third successive edition of the writing contest organised by Lawyard. Sponsors for the competition include Duale Ovia & Alex-Adedipe (DOA), a Lagos-based law firm where Alao worked as an Associate prior to travelling to the United Kingdom for his Masters’ degree. Other sponsors include TechHive Advisory; Garnet Law Practice; Ikigai; LegalNaija; Dr. Simisola Akintoye, a senior lecturer at De Montfort University; and Ms. Taiwo Akinniyi.

Other winners at this year’s edition of the Adavize Alao Essay Competition include Chidera Emmanuel Chikere, an Associate at Africa Law Practice who emerged the first runner-up in the Young Lawyers’ category having scored 40 points out of a possible 50. Olawoyin Tolani Mustapha, currently a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Associate at T&A Legal emerged the second runner-up in the Young Lawyers’ category with 38 points.

For the Law Students’ category, Lagos State University’s Sina Victor Akinmusire placed second with 34 points while Durueke Clinton Charles of the University of Lagos emerged third with 31 points.

Lawyard Remembers Co-founder, Adavize Alao

All winners of the essay competition will receive their prizes immediately after the Adavize Alao Symposium on Privacy and Data Protection on Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at which they would be recognised. The Symposium is themed ‘Consumer Protection in the Digital Age’ and will be held virtually in line with public health safety measures.

The Executive Vice Chairman, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, Mr. Babatunde Irukera is billed to deliver the keynote address at the Symposium and will be ably represented by Ms. Morayo Adebayo (Adisa), Technical Consultant to Executive Vice Chairman & CEO, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, Nigeria. Interested participants at the Symposium can join same via Zoom or through Lawyard’s Facebook page .

Other speakers for the event include Victoria Oloni (winner of the Law Students’ category of the first edition of the competition); Francis Monyango, Ifedayo Adekeye and Gbeminiyi Ojedokun.

Lawyard is a legal media and services platform that provides enlightenment and access to legal services to members of the public (individuals and businesses) while also availing lawyers of needed information on new trends and resources in various areas of practice.

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Kelvin Kpengwa, Obiorah Chibuzor Win 5th Edition of Adavize Alao Essay Competition

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2021 Public Citizen Law Essay Competition

De-Coding Indian Intellectual Property Law

Announcing the Winners of the 2nd Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition on IP Law!

Following on from the success of last year’s inaugural edition of the Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition on IP Law, on May 14 th , 2021 we announced the 2 nd edition of the Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition on the occasion of  Shamnad ‘s 45 th  birth anniversary. Like last year, we kept the topic selection open to participants – asking them to choose any topic they wanted so long as it related to IP. And encouraged participants to draw inspiration from Shamnad’s  scholarship . This year, we received fewer entries as compared to last year – presumably the pandemic fatigue has really set in amongst students. Nonetheless, we were glad to see entries across a range of interesting topics and are very happy to see relatively uncommon topics take the podium places. We shortlisted the top 6 essays from across the entries for our panel of esteemed judges, consisting of Prof N.S. Gopalakrishnan, Prof David Llewelyn, and Prof Madhavi Sunder (please click here for their bios). Now that we have collated the scores, we are very happy to announce the top 3 winning essays.

And the winners are:

1. The first prize goes to Ramakash G Suriaprakash , from Tamil Nadu National Law University, Tiruchirappalli (batch of 2021), for their essay titled, ‘ Inventions Seriously Prejudicing the Environment: Can the Precautionary Principle Offer a Way Out?’

Our winning essay displays a wonderful exposition of a significant problem as well as thoughtful and creative engagement with possible policy responses to that problem.

This essay re-emphasises Section 3(b) exclusions of the Indian Patents Act regarding inventions which cause ‘serious prejudice’ to the environment, in the context of the climate crisis that humanity is facing today. The author notes that the issue covered by this provision has not been taken seriously in the country – from having a narrower scope than what is allowed under TRIPS, to having no serious engagement in patent manuals, to having no jurisprudential guidelines thus far. And then examines whether the Precautionary Principle from environmental law jurisprudence can be utilised to address this issue. After considering arguments for and against this idea, the author proposes at least two scenarios where the precautionary principle could be useful in the patent context.

The essay is available here .

2. The second prize goes to Devangini Rai , from University School of Law and Legal Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (batch of 2021), for their essay titled, ‘Infringement of Publicity Rights: An Intellectual Property Approach’

[As taken from the essay]: The aim of this article is to analyse India’s approach in navigating through publicity rights. The article endorses an intellectual property approach to understand the right and its infringement. This is achieved by understanding the parallels between publicity right and trademark law. Further, the application of a publicity right requires checks and balances which is explained through exceptions derived from copyright law. Throughout the article, the author derives insights from US case laws which have had a considerable influence on Indian courts. Towards the end, the article contemplates whether India really needs a sui generis legislation on publicity rights or not.

3. The third prize goes to Shrudula Murthy , NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad (batch of 2023), for their essay titled, ‘ A Conflict of Rights: Public Photography, Copyright and Innovation’

[As edited from the essay] This essay focuses on the question of how one can balance the rights of the different parties engaged in public photography and, what outcome would best serve the interests of both copyright law and the public. To that end, the essay looks at the provisions and cases dealing with copyright infringement in public photography and the ‘freedom of panorama’ in the American, European, and to the extent available, Indian jurisprudence. The drawbacks in applying normative copyright defences in public photography are then explored. And finally, the essay concludes with some suggestions to reduce the ambiguity that currently exists.

The SpicyIP team would like to give our heartiest congratulations to the winners, and our gratitude to all the participants their enthusiastic participation, pandemic notwithstanding! Once again, we’re incredibly thankful to our wonderful panel of judges for lending their time to judge the essays and ensure the success of the competition!

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Announcing the inaugural spicyip doctoral fellow, ‘non’-pharmaceutical substance and efficacy under sec 3(d), image rights alright—but can they trump established rights and doctrines should they, taking publicity and privacy to the grave: delhi high court on descendability of publicity rights, 1 thought on “announcing the winners of the 2nd shamnad basheer essay competition on ip law”.

Would you publish the other essays that you had received as well?

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Lawyers for Economic Advancement and Development

Essay competition registration.

Up to 15 US$500 awards will be made in February 2025 for the top-ranked essays answering this year's essay question:

    How can laws regulating climate change and the environment support economic development?

Eligible students (students with both citizenship and current enrolment in a registered academic program with at least one law class in one of the countries listed on the Home page) are to register below by 31 October 2024; essays will be accepted from registered candidates between 1-31 December 2024 (no extensions). Essays must be in compliance with competition rules (see below ) and will not be accepted from unregistered candidates or after 31 December 2024.

Note that awards may be payable to the winner's educational institution on his/her behalf and not to the winning student directly. Funds received may also be less any necessary bank conversion fees and/or taxes. Lex:lead will never charge a fee to participate. A  Certificate of Participation  will be sent to all registered candidates who submit an essay by 31 December 2024.

Reserved funding 2024:

• DLA Piper award for the highest-ranked winner from an eligible Asian country

• Jerome Poitou award for the highest-ranked award-winner from Haiti

• Linklaters carry-over funding for a wining essay from an eligible Asian country

• Skrine carry-over funding for a wining essay from an eligible Asian country

Competition instructions (please review)

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Register below completing all fields. Your email address must be accurate for us to contact you - please double-check before submitting. We will acknowledge your application on receipt but this may take a few days. In completing this form you consent to us contacting you via the email you provide.

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Essay  COMPETITION

2024 global essay prize, registrations are now open all essayists must register  here  before friday 31 may, 2024.

The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.

Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge, and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by a panel of senior academics drawn from leading universities including Oxford and Princeton, under the leadership of the Chairman of Examiners, former Cambridge philosopher, Dr Jamie Whyte.

The judges will choose their favourite essay from each of seven subject categories - Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law - and then select the winner of the Grand Prize for the best entry in any subject. There is also a separate prize awarded for the best essay in the junior category, for under 15s.

Q1. Do we have any good reasons to trust our moral intuition?

Q2. Do girls have a (moral) right to compete in sporting contests that exclude boys?

Q3. Should I be held responsible for what I believe?

Q1. Is there such a thing as too much democracy?

Q2. Is peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip possible?

Q3. When is compliance complicity?

Q1. What is the optimal global population?  

Q2. Accurate news reporting is a public good. Does it follow that news agencies should be funded from taxation?

Q3. Do successful business people benefit others when making their money, when spending it, both, or neither?

Q1. Why was sustained economic growth so rare before the later 18th century and why did this change?

Q2. Has music ever significantly changed the course of history?

Q3. Why do civilisations collapse? Is our civilisation in danger?

Q1. When, if ever, should a company be permitted to refuse to do business with a person because of that person’s public statements?

Q2. In the last five years British police have arrested several thousand people for things they posted on social media. Is the UK becoming a police state?

Q3. Your parents say that 11pm is your bedtime. But they don’t punish you if you don’t go to bed by 11pm. Is 11pm really your bedtime?

Q1. According to a study by researchers at four British universities, for each 15-point increase in IQ, the likelihood of getting married increases by around 35% for a man but decreases by around 58% for a woman. Why?

In the original version of this question we misstated a statistic. This was caused by reproducing an error that appeared in several media summaries of the study. We are grateful to one of our contestants, Xinyi Zhang, who helped us to see (with humility and courtesy) why we should take more care to check our sources. We corrected the text on 4 April. Happily, the correction does not in any way alter the thrust of the question.

Q2. There is an unprecedented epidemic of depression and anxiety among young people. Can we fix this? How?

Q3. What is the difference between a psychiatric illness and a character flaw?

Q1. “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” What could the speaker mean by “spiritual”?

Q2. Is it reasonable to thank God for protection from some natural harm if He is responsible for causing the harm?

Q3. Does God reward those who believe in him? If so, why?

JUNIOR prize

Q1. Does winning a free and fair election automatically confer a mandate for governing?

Q2. Has the anti-racism movement reduced racism?

Q3. Is there life after death?

Q4. How did it happen that governments came to own and run most high schools, while leaving food production to private enterprise? 

Q5. When will advancing technology make most of us unemployable? What should we do about this?

Q6. Should we trust fourteen-year-olds to make decisions about their own bodies? 

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS & FURTHER DETAILS

Please read the following carefully.

Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2024 is open to students from any country.

Registration  

Only candidates who registered before the registration deadline of Friday, 31 May 2024 may enter this year's competition. To register, click here .  

All entries must be submitted by 11.59 pm BST on  the submission deadline: Sunday, 30 June 2024 .  Candidates must be eighteen years old, or younger, on that date. (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be fourteen years old, or younger, on that date.)

Entry is free.

Each essay must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration). 

The filename of your pdf must be in this format: FirstName-LastName-Category-QuestionNumber.pdf; so, for instance, Alexander Popham would submit his answer to question 2 in the Psychology category with the following file name:

Alexander-Popham-Psychology-2.pdf

Essays with filenames which are not in this format will be rejected.

The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself. 

Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a Bibliography that is clearly titled as such.

Each candidate will be required to provide the email address of an academic referee who is familiar with the candidate's written academic work. This should be a school teacher, if possible, or another responsible adult who is not a relation of the candidate. The John Locke Institute will email referees to verify that the essays submitted are indeed the original work of the candidates.

Submissions may be made as soon as registration opens in April. We recommend that you submit your essay well in advance of th e deadline to avoid any last-minute complications.

Acceptance of your essay depends on your granting us permission to use your data for the purposes of receiving and processing your entry as well as communicating with you about the Awards Ceremony Dinner, the academic conference, and other events and programmes of the John Locke Institute and its associated entities.  

Late entries

If for any reason you miss the 30 June deadline you will have an opportunity to make a late entry, under two conditions:

a) A late entry fee of 20.00 USD must be paid by credit card within twenty-four hours of the original deadline; and

b) Your essay must be submitted  before 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.

To pay for late entry, a registrant need only log into his or her account, select the relevant option and provide the requested payment information.

Our grading system is proprietary. Essayists may be asked to discuss their entry with a member of the John Locke Institute’s faculty. We use various means to identify plagiarism, contract cheating, the use of AI and other forms of fraud . Our determinations in all such matters are final.

Essays will be judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. The very best essays are likely to be those which would be capable of changing somebody's mind. Essays which ignore or fail to address the strongest objections and counter-arguments are unlikely to be successful .

Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible.

The writers of the best essays will receive a commendation and be shortlisted for a prize. Writers of shortlisted essays will be notified by 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 31 July. They will also be invited to London for an invitation-only academic conference and awards dinner in September, where the prize-winners will be announced. Unlike the competition itself, the academic conference and awards dinner are not free. Please be aware that n obody is required to attend either the academic conference or the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London.

All short-listed candidates, including prize-winners, will be able to download eCertificates that acknowledge their achievement. If you win First, Second or Third Prize, and you travel to London for the ceremony, you will receive a signed certificate. 

There is a prize for the best essay in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme, and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. Prize-giving ceremonies will take place in London, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet some of the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome.

The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or visiting scholars programmes. 

The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

R egistration opens: 1 April, 2024.

Registration deadline: 31 May, 2024. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2024.

Late entry deadline: 10 July, 2024. (Late entries are subject to a 20.00 USD charge, payable by 1 July.)

Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2024.

Academic conference: 20 - 22 September, 2024.

Awards dinner: 21 September, 2024.

Any queries regarding the essay competition should be sent to [email protected] . Please be aware that, due to the large volume of correspondence we receive, we cannot guarantee to answer every query. In particular, regrettably, we are unable to respond to questions whose answers can be found on our website.

If you would like to receive helpful tips  from our examiners about what makes for a winning essay or reminders of upcoming key dates for the 2024  essay competition, please provide your email here to be added to our contact list. .

Thanks for subscribing!

The John Locke Institute's Global Essay Prize is acknowledged as the world's most prestigious essay competition. 

We welcome tens of thousands of submissions from ambitious students in more than 150 countries, and our examiners - including distinguished philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians, psychologists, theologians, and legal scholars - read and carefully assess every entry. 

I encourage you to register for this competition, not only for the hope of winning a prize or commendation, and not only for the chance to join the very best contestants at our academic conference and gala ceremony in London, but equally for the opportunity to engage in the serious scholarly enterprise of researching, reflecting on, writing about, and editing an answer to one of the important and provocative questions in this year's Global Essay Prize. 

We believe that the skills you will acquire in the process will make you a better thinker and a more effective advocate for the ideas that matter most to you.

I hope to see you in September!

Best wishes,

Jamie Whyte, Ph.D. (C ANTAB ) 

Chairman of Examiners

Q. I missed the registration deadline. May I still register or submit an essay?

A. No. Only candidates who registered before 31 May will be able to submit an essay. 

Q. Are footnote s, endnotes, a bibliography or references counted towards the word limit?

A. No. Only the body of the essay is counted. 

Q. Are in-text citations counted towards the word limit? ​

A. If you are using an in-text based referencing format, such as APA, your in-text citations are included in the word limit.

Q. Is it necessary to include foo tnotes or endnotes in an essay? ​

A. You  may not  include footnotes, but you may include in-text citations or endnotes. You should give your sources of any factual claims you make, and you should ackn owledge any other authors on whom you rely.​

Q. I am interested in a question that seems ambiguous. How should I interpret it?

A. You may interpret a question as you deem appropriate, clarifying your interpretation if necessary. Having done so, you must answer the question as directly as possible.

Q. How strict are  the age eligibility criteria?

A. Only students whose nineteenth birthday falls after 30 June 2024 will be eligible for a prize or a commendation. In the case of the Junior category, only students whose fifteenth birthday falls after 30 June 2024 will be eligible for a prize or a commendation. 

Q. May I submit more than one essay?

A. Yes, you may submit as many essays as you please in any or all categories.

Q. If I am eligible to compete in the Junior category, may I also (or instead) compete in another category?

A. Yes, you may.

Q. May I team up with someone else to write an essay?  

A. No. Each submitted essay must be entirely the work of a single individual.

Q. May I use AI, such as ChatGPT or the like, in writing my essay?

A. All essays will be checked for the use of AI. If we find that any content is generated by AI, your essay will be disqualified. We will also ask you, upon submission of your essay, whether you used AI for  any  purpose related to the writing of your essay, and if so, you will be required to provide details. In that case, if, in our judgement, you have not provided full and accurate details of your use of AI, your essay will be disqualified. 

Since any use of AI (that does not result in disqualification) can only negatively affect our assessment of your work relative to that of work that is done without using AI, your safest course of action is simply not to use it at all. If, however, you choose to use it for any purpose, we reserve the right to make relevant judgements on a case-by-case basis and we will not enter into any correspondence. 

Q. May I have someone else edit, or otherwise help me with, my essay?

A. You may of course discuss your essay with others, and it is perfectly acceptable for them to offer general advice and point out errors or weaknesses in your writing or content, leaving you to address them.

However, no part of your essay may be written by anyone else. This means that you must edit your own work and that while a proofreader may point out errors, you as the essayist must be the one to correct them. 

Q. Do I have to attend the awards ceremony to win a prize? ​

A. Nobody is required to attend the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London. But if we invite you to London it is because your essay was good enough - in the opinion of the First Round judges - to be at least a contender for First, Second or Third Prize. Normally the Second Round judges will agree that the short-listed essays are worth at least a commendation.

Q. Is there an entry fee?

A. No. There is no charge to enter our global essay competition unless you submit your essay after the normal deadline, in which case there is a fee of 20.00 USD .

Q. Can I receive a certificate for my participation in your essay competition if I wasn't shortlisted? 

A. No. Certificates are awarded only for shortlisted essays. Short-listed contestants who attend the award ceremony in London will receive a paper certificate. If you cannot travel to London, you will be able to download your eCertificate.

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A. Log into your account and check "Shortlist Status" for (each of) your essay(s).

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A. Last year, many shortlisted finalists who applied to join our invitation-only academic conference missed the opportunity because of capacity constraints at Oxford's largest venues. This year, the conference will be held in central London and the gala awards dinner will take place in an iconic London ballroom. 

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A. You will not receive a confirmation email. Rather, you can at any time log in to the account that you created and see that your registration details are present and correct.

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• Constitutional Law / LENS Essay Series / Presidential Power
• LENS Essay Series: “Curtailing the Executive Emergency Powers: Congress’s Job, the Judiciary’s Headache”

by Charlie Dunlap, J.D. · 11 April 2024

Today Duke Law 3L Anighya Crocker takes on a very  timely topic: the scope of the President’s emergency powers and the role Congress can–and should–have in scoping these authorities while not hampering the Executive’s need to take quick action when necessary. Anighya makes a very convincing argument that it is best if the legislative branch, not the courts, addresses the necessary reforms.

Here’s the abstract of the article :

This paper examines the expansive nature of the Executive’s emergency powers and argues that Congress should act to reform these powers. The Covid-19 pandemic brought scholarly attention to this issue, but certain academics have advocated for the Judiciary to intervene in reforming Executive powers. Specifically, certain academics have asserted that the Federal Judiciary should abandon its practice of deference to the Political Branches during times of National emergency.

Throughout this era, Congress pawned away many of its emergency powers, placing them within the grasp of the Executive. Simultaneously, the Judiciary developed and maintained its practice of emergency deference.

Part II discusses the modern justifications for judicial deference and criticizes the current push for abandoning deference. Part III briefly outlines steps for Congressional intervention, suggesting reforms to the National Emergencies Act and other relevant laws. Reforms like those listed below do not disrupt the Federal balance but instead reclaim powers that Congress has previously delegated to the Executive.

Altogether, this work stresses the importance of Congressional action in addressing the unchecked growth of the Executive’s emergency powers. Lasting reforms must come from Congress and not the Judiciary.

Again, you can find Anighya’s superb essay here .

About the Author:

At Duke, Anighya serves as a Lead Editor for the Alaska Law Review and is an active member of the Federalist Society. Upon graduating from Duke, Anighya will clerk for the Honorable Judge James C. Dever III of the Eastern District of North Carolina and the Honorable Justice Sarah K. Campbell of the Tennessee Supreme Court before returning to Bass, Berry, & Sims.

Remember what we like to say on   Lawfire ® : gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself !

Tags: Anighya H.D. Crocker Congress Emergency authorities

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Statement from Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

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April 10, 2024

I write this with profound sadness. Since I became a dean, my wife and I have invited the first-year students to our home for dinner. We were asked this year by the presidents of the third year class to have the graduating students over for dinner because they began in Fall 2021 when COVID prevented us from having dinners for them. We were delighted to oblige and designated three nights – April 9, 10, 11 – that graduating students could choose among. I never imagined that something that we do to help our community would become ugly and divisive.

Last week, there was an awful poster, on social media and bulletin boards in the law school building, of a caricature of me holding a bloody knife and fork, with the words in large letters, “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.” I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism, with an image that invokes the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel and that attacks me for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish. Although many complained to me about the posters and how it deeply offended them, I felt that though deeply offensive, they were speech protected by the First Amendment. But I was upset that those in our community had to see this disturbing, antisemitic poster around the law school.

The students responsible for this had the leaders of our student government tell me that if we did not cancel the dinners, they would protest at them. I was sad to hear this, but made clear that we would not be intimidated and that the dinners would go forward for those who wanted to attend. I said that I assumed that any protest would not be disruptive.

On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for the dinner. All had registered in advance. All came into our backyard and were seated at tables for dinner. While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.

The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.

The dinners will go forward on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope that there will be no disruptions; my home is not a forum for free speech. But we will have security present. Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar.

I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community. I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.

Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law University of California, Berkeley School of Law

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On March 10, Twitter users in Russia suddenly experienced a sharp slowdown in the service.

Russian authorities wanted Twitter to remove more than 3,000 “illegal” posts, which human rights groups saw as an effort to stifle dissent.

When Twitter did not comply, the government was ready. It deployed a new technology so it could do the job itself.

Russia Is Censoring the Internet, With Coercion and Black Boxes

By Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur

Russia’s boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways — with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.

The messages, sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details — like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds — from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived.

The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment alongside their own computer systems and servers. Sometimes caged behind lock and key, the new gear linked back to a command center in Moscow, giving the authorities startling new powers to block, filter and slow down websites that they did not want the Russian public to see.

The process, underway since 2019 , represents the start of perhaps the world’s most ambitious digital censorship effort outside China. Under President Vladimir V. Putin , who once called the internet a “C.I.A. project” and views the web as a threat to his power, the Russian government is attempting to bring the country’s once open and freewheeling internet to heel.

The gear has been tucked inside the equipment rooms of Russia’s largest telecom and internet service providers, including Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom, a senior Russian lawmaker revealed this year. It affects the vast majority of the country’s more than 120 million wireless and home internet users, according to researchers and activists.

The world got its first glimpse of Russia’s new tools in action when Twitter was slowed to a crawl in the country this spring . It was the first time the filtering system had been put to work, researchers and activists said. Other sites have since been blocked, including several linked to the jailed opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny.

“This is something the world can copycat,” said Laura Cunningham, a former head of State Department programs on internet freedom. “Russia’s censorship model can quickly and easily be replicated by other authoritarian governments.”

What the Technology Looks Like in Action

The image on the left loads in about 4 seconds , approximately how long it takes in normal conditions. The same image on the right takes eight times longer to load, about 34 seconds , simulating what a Twitter user in Russia would experience with the government’s technology in use.

Russia’s censorship technology sits between companies that provide internet access and people who are browsing the web on a phone or laptop. In a process often likened to intercepting mailed letters, the software — known as “deep packet inspection” — filters through data traveling across an internet network, slowing down websites or removing whatever it has been programmed to block.

The cutoffs threaten to upend Russia’s thriving digital life. While the political system has clung to Mr. Putin’s cult of personality, and television broadcasters and newspapers face tight restrictions, online culture has brimmed with activism, dark humor and foreign content. Broadly censoring the internet could return the country to a deeper form of isolation, akin to the Cold War era.

“I was born in the era of a super-free internet, and now I’m seeing it collapsing,” said Ksenia Ermoshina, a researcher from Russia now working at the French National Center for Scientific Research. She published a paper in April about the censorship technology.

The censorship infrastructure was described by 17 Russian telecom experts, activists, researchers and academics with knowledge of the work, many of whom declined to be named because they feared reprisal. Government documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, also outlined some of the technical details and demands made to telecom and internet service providers.

Russia is using the censorship technology to gain more leverage over Western internet companies in addition to other strong-arm tactics and legal intimidation. In September, after the government threatened to arrest local employees for Google and Apple, the companies removed apps run by supporters of Mr. Navalny ahead of national elections.

Roskomnadzor, the country’s internet regulator overseeing the effort, can now go further. It has threatened to take down YouTube, Facebook and Instagram if they do not block certain content on their own. After the authorities slowed down Twitter this year, the company agreed to remove dozens of posts deemed illegal by the government.

Russia’s censorship efforts have faced little resistance. In the United States and Europe, once full-throated champions of an open internet, leaders have been largely silent amid deepening distrust of Silicon Valley and attempts to regulate the worst internet abuses themselves. Russian authorities have pointed to the West’s tech industry regulation to justify their own crackdown.

“It’s striking that this hasn’t gotten the attention of the Biden administration,” said Michael McFaul, an American ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. He criticized Apple, Facebook , Google and Twitter for not speaking out more forcefully against Russia’s policies.

A White House spokeswoman said the administration had discussed freedom of expression online with the Russian government and called on the Kremlin to “stop its pressure campaign to censor critics.”

In a statement, Roskomnadzor did not address its filtering technology but said foreign social networks had continued ignoring Russian internet laws, which prohibit incitement and content on topics that “split the state,” such as drug use and extremist organizations.

“Russian legislation in the field of media and information does not allow censorship,” it said, adding that the law “clearly defines the types of content that are harmful and pose a threat” to citizens.

Google, which owns YouTube, and Twitter declined to comment. Apple did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Facebook did not address Russia specifically but said it was “committed to respecting the human rights of all those who use our products.”

Rostelecom, one of Russia’s largest internet service providers, referred questions to Roskomnadzor. MegaFon declined to comment. MTS and Vympelcom did not respond to requests for comment.

Many question whether Russia has the technical expertise or political will to cut off major online sources of entertainment, information and work for its citizens. In 2018, before the new censorship technology was in place, the authorities abandoned an effort to shut down the popular messaging service Telegram because of technical problems and public anger. Many see YouTube as a future target because of its use by independent media and critics of the Kremlin, which could cause a backlash.

Yet internet access is increasingly used as an instrument of political power. In recent years, governments in India, Myanmar, Ethiopia and elsewhere have used internet blackouts to stifle pockets of dissent. Russia had internet shutdowns during antigovernment protests in the southern region of Ingushetia in 2018 and Moscow in 2019.

China has provided inspiration. For years, Russian politicians held talks with Chinese officials about making their own Great Firewall , once even meeting with the architect of the filters that block foreign sites. In 2019, during China’s World Internet Conference, Roskomnadzor signed an agreement with its Chinese analogue pledging tighter government controls over the internet.

But unlike China, which has three state-run telecoms that get people online, Russia has thousands of internet providers, which makes it more difficult to censor. That’s where the black boxes come in, giving government officials a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer for the filtering of specific websites and services without cutting off all access.

Russia has a long history of censorship. For decades, international phone lines were restricted and radio jammers obstructed foreign broadcasts. The state still tightly controls television.

The internet was different. It was credited with playing a role in bringing Boris Yeltsin to power in 1991 by allowing pro-democracy groups inside Russia and beyond to coordinate and exchange information. In the ensuing years, fiber-optic cables were laid to connect the country to the global internet.

Mr. Putin has tried putting that genie back in the bottle. Surveillance systems monitor people’s online activities, and some bloggers have been arrested. In 2012, the country passed a law requiring internet service providers to block thousands of banned websites, but it was hard to enforce and many sites remained available.

So in May 2019, Mr. Putin signed off on a new phase: a “sovereign internet” law that forced internet providers to install “technical means of countering threats” — equipment loaded with software for the government to track, filter and reroute internet traffic without any involvement or knowledge from the companies.

The law created a registry of transnational internet cables entering the country and key exchange points where internet networks in Russia connect. This map makes it easier for authorities to shut down parts of the network, experts said.

Since then, hundreds of companies have received orders from Roskomnadzor. The regulator has demanded information about the companies’ computer systems and what settings must be used to allow a government body, the Center for Monitoring and Management of Public Communications Networks, to remotely access their networks, according to documents shared with The Times.

Then government-approved contractors installed the filtering equipment, allowing the regulator to block, slow or redirect traffic, said Mikhail Klimarev, an industry analyst who has worked with Russian internet firms such as Rostelecom.

“A blocking system is installed at the border of every Russian internet provider,” he said.

The technology is now at 500 locations of telecom operators, covering 100 percent of mobile internet traffic and 73 percent of broadband traffic, a Russian official involved in the program said on Wednesday. By next year, the technology will be inside more than 1,000 locations, the official said.

The filtering technology is made by companies including RDP.ru, a Russian provider of telecommunications technology with ties to the government, according to University of Michigan researchers and Russian telecom experts. On RDP’s website , it boasts of offering “high-performance URL filtering of prohibited sites” that allow operators to comply with Russian laws. The company sells products in Belarus and Kazakhstan, countries where human rights groups have documented internet censorship.

RDP.ru did not respond to a request for comment.

Attacking Twitter, which is not widely popular in Russia, was a “crucial moment,” said Andrei Soldatov, co-author of “The Red Web,” a book about the Russian internet. University of Michigan researchers measured the connection was slowed by about 87 percent, only slightly better than cellular networks from the early 2000s.

“It showed they had this capability and could use it,” Mr. Soldatov said.

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting. Additional production by Gray Beltran .

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the technology that can be used to slow down internet traffic. It is deep packet inspection, not deep package inspection.

How we handle corrections

Adam Satariano is a technology reporter based in London. More about Adam Satariano

Paul Mozur is a correspondent focused on technology and geopolitics in Asia. He was part of a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. More about Paul Mozur

Advertisement

Russian Federation: A New Experimental Legal Framework In Russia Shows The Perils And Promise Of Future AI Regulation

A new experimental legal regime for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) projects is unfolding in Moscow and subsequently throughout Russia. The first initiative was introduced in a draft bill earlier this year, which underwent very few changes after its first publication. As a result, Russia's Federal Law No. 123-FZ came into force on July 1, 2020, introducing a special legal framework for "digital sandboxes" in Moscow.

Digital sandboxes are territories where technologies may be developed and tested even if such technologies fall outside of the current legislation. And as a result of the issues posed by this new law, a more expansive law - Federal Law No. 258-FZ - will come into effect in 2021.

Federal Law No. 123-FZ

This experimental regime allows companies to work on innovative AI technologies that are not regulated under existing legislation. It creates opportunities for seeing just how AI functions under real-life conditions.

Additionally, the new law is a first step in the legal regulation of AI in the Russian Federation, since it introduces definitions for artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence technology that may be used in future regulations. The duration of the experimental regime is five years, and it started in July 2020.

The experimental regime will also facilitate the realization of the Moscow government's project, "Moscow - the Smart City 2030," which focuses on the development of smart living, smart mobility, a smart economy, and a smart environment in Russia's capital. Although the project aims to fundamentally digitize the city by 2030, some AI technologies already form an integral part of the daily life of Moscow's citizens. For example, self-driven cars have been tested in Moscow since 2019, and several companies are currently examining their use on public roads.

By launching digital sandboxes, the authorities can closely monitor which legal issues arise from the daily use of AI and which of those must be urgently regulated. The clearest red-flag issues going forward are a liability in cases of AI malfunction or fault, and the accidental disclosure or erasure of personal data by AI.

Fundamental concerns

The provisions of 123-FZ regarding the processing of personal data have already caused significant concern among citizens. For example, the law states that no personal data involved in the project can be transferred to persons not related to the experiment, nor can that data be stored outside of Moscow. This seems obscure, given the boundless nature of the Internet and the fact that cloud services are commonly used for data storage and access. Moreover, the personal data will still be at the disposal of the Moscow city government, as well as the entrepreneurs and legal entities entered into a special register of operators.

The update also amends the Law on Personal Data. Part 1 of Article 6 is supplemented by Clause 9.1, according to which the processing of personal data obtained as a result of depersonalization is carried out in order to increase the efficiency of state or municipal administration, as well as for other purposes provided by 123-FZ.

The amended Article 10 of the "Law on Personal Data" indicates that "the processing of personal data regarding the state of health obtained as a result of depersonalization is allowed in order to increase the effectiveness of state or municipal administration."

At the same time, the law does not address such fundamental questions as:

• where the data of our digital identities will be stored and how it will be erased;
• how exactly the privacy of citizens will be ensured; and
• who will be liable in the cases of failure to depersonalize data.

Such regulations over personal data also raise questions about the primary aim of the new law, as well as generating concerns that participants in the experimental regime will have access to and can process the personal data of Moscow's citizens.

To minimize the negative effect of the law, a draft bill was submitted to the State Duma proposing to delay the introduction of the legislation until July 2025 in order to provide more clarity on the processing of anonymized personal data. The explanatory note related to the bill indicates that the use and implementation of AI technologies, including tracking and facial recognition systems, cause serious and legitimate concerns among citizens.

During the proposed postponement period, legal gaps related to the responsibility of officials for possible violations of the proper use of personal data can be eliminated. The draft received negative comments during the first reading, and the second reading of a revised version will take place during the autumn session of the State Duma.

Overall, Russia has the resources to implement innovative technologies into the country's operations, but the legislation is still lagging significantly. This could lead to an abuse of power by both the authorities and the accredited operators with access to the data.

Federal Law No. 258-FZ

As a result, comprehensive regulation of AI in Russia is urgently needed. First steps in this regulation, however, have already been taken, including the recent enactment of the Federal Law No. 258-FZ "On Experimental Legal Regimes in the Sphere of Digital Innovations in the Russian Federation. " This law comes into force in January 2021. Other corresponding laws are expected in the years ahead.

This new law will allow the creation of digital sandboxes throughout the whole country. Unlike 123-FZ, 258-FZ establishes the maximum duration of the regime for three years, with a possible extension.

The spheres allowed to participate in this new regime include the medical sector, transportation and logistics, architecture and construction, finance, the remote sales of goods and services, municipal services, industrial production, and agriculture. Other sectors may be added later.

Under the new law, the government will have the right to establish exemptions from certain legislative requirements that prevent the implementation of digital innovations. However, in order for digital sandboxes to begin immediately after the implementation of 258-FZ, the sectoral federal laws regulating areas of respective activity must also be adjusted accordingly. Moreover, the hierarchy of overlapping provisions between 123-FZ applying to Moscow and 258-FZ extending to the whole country presents issues that must be resolved in the course of the implementation of the new laws.

Read the original article on GowlingWLG.com

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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