Competition Details:

Deadline: Submissions must be emailed or postmarked by February 15, 2008, 11:59pm EST. Papers postmarked after this date will not be considered. Papers may be emailed to cudahy@acslaw.org. Papers may also be sent in hardcopy to the following address:
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy
Attn: Cudahy Writing Competition
1333 H St. NW, 11th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Eligibility: The competition is open to all. Practicing lawyers, policymakers, academics, and law students all are encouraged to take part. Coauthored submissions are eligible and if selected, the coauthors will share the prize. Each submission must be an original academic work that is either unpublished or was published no more than one year prior to the competition deadline (specifically, not before January 2007). If a submission has been published or accepted for publication, the author should consult the journal to make sure it will consent to ACS posting the publication on its website, with appropriate attribution.

Content: Submissions should be related to regulatory or administrative law, broadly construed. Appropriate subjects include empirical or comparative analyses of the effectiveness of specific regulatory regimes or of deregulation, doctrinal investigations of the development of administrative law rules or principles by courts and administrative agencies and the effects of that development, and normative analyses of how particular regulatory or administrative regimes or deregulation advance or fail to advance values of fairness, participation, and transparency.

Format: A wide range of formats are eligible and encouraged, from traditional full-length law review articles to less academic, lightly footnoted essays written to be accessible to a wide audience. Submissions should be less than 25,000 words, but longer, exceptional works may be considered. Shorter submissions are strongly encouraged.

Judging Process: All submissions will go through an initial screening process. Finalists from that process will be reviewed by the panel of judges. This panel will select up to three top papers as finalists. Submissions will be judged on their depth of analysis, quality of writing, readiness for publication, originality (in topic selection and treatment), and thoroughness of research. The winner will be announced in mid-June at the ACS National Convention.

Panel of Judges:

• The Honorable David Hamilton, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Indiana (1994-present)
• The Honorable Patricia M. Wald, Judge on the U.S.Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1979-1999)
• Jeffrey P. Kehne, Partner, Hill & Kehne LLC
• Allison Zieve, Attorney, Public Citizen Litigation Group
• Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
• Cynthia Farina, Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School
• William D. Henderson, Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

Award: The author of the winning paper will receive a cash prize of $3,000. Up to three top papers will receive special recognition at the summer 2008 ACS National Convention, on the ACS website, and potentially through other means agreed upon by the authors and ACS. For example, ACS’s two journals, the Harvard Law and Policy Review (HLPR) and Advance, will consider publication of appropriate pieces that meet their word limit guidelines (under 10,000 words for HLPR and under 5,000 words for Advance).

Additional Questions: Check www.acslaw.org for updates or email cudahy@acslaw.org.