American Constitution Society Announces Winners of 2025 Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Nancy Rodriguez, media@acslaw.org

Washington, D.C. –  The American Constitution Society (ACS) is pleased to announce the lawyer and law student winners of the 2025 Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.

This year’s lawyer winner is Jodi Short, the Mary Kay Kane Professor of Law at UC Law, San Francisco.

This year’s law student winner is Ari Goldstein, a recent JD/MBA graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

“I am pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law,” said Interim ACS President Zinelle October. “ACS is dedicated to promoting legal scholarship that contributes to our understanding of administrative and regulatory law. The authors of this year’s winning papers have written on timely and important matters as courts around the country hear ongoing challenges to administrative and regulatory precedent related to labor, abortion, and the environment.”

The Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law honors Judge Cudahy’s distinguished contributions to the fields of regulatory and administrative law. He combined a keen grasp of legal doctrine, deep insight into the institutional forces that determine how doctrine is implemented, and an appreciation of the public impact of doctrinal and institutional choices, including the consequences for fundamental values such as fairness, participation, and transparency. The award seeks to encourage and reward these qualities in the scholarship of others.

Short is recognized for her article, “The Moral Turn in Administrative Law,” which examines the emergence of moral considerations in administrative law. “While moral commitments have never been absent from administrative law and administration, they have traditionally been subordinated to proceduralist, institutionalist, and technocratic concerns,” writes Short. The article later examines how, “Policy discourse framed around widely shared moral reference points has the potential to replenish our diminished set of common cultural resources and to anchor shared conversations about what policies government pursue.”

Goldstein’s winning paper, “The Lost World of Jurisdictional and Constitutional Facts in Administrative Law”, traces how the courts, especially after the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), moved away from verifying jurisdictional and constitutional facts in favor of deferring more broadly to agencies. Although these doctrines have largely disappeared from mainstream administrative law, remnants still exist in areas like immigration, civil rights, and national security, where courts sometimes still insist on reviewing key facts independently. Goldstein suggests that revisiting these older doctrines could help rebalance power between agencies and the courts, especially in an era when the role of the administrative state is once again under scrutiny.

Each of the winners will receive a cash prize of $1,500. They also were recognized at the ACS 2025 National Convention Series on June 11.

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AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY
The American Constitution Society is a 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan legal organization. Through a diverse nationwide network of progressive lawyers, law students, judges, scholars, advocates, and many others, our mission is to support and advocate for laws and legal systems that redress the founding failures of our Constitution, strengthen our democratic legitimacy, uphold the rule of law, and realize the promise of equality for all, including people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and other historically excluded communities. For more information, visit us at www.acslaw.org.