GRAND PRIZE
- $2500 cash prize
- The Grand Prize –winning paper will be published in the Criminal Law Journal, the official quarterly publication of the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar of California
- One-year student membership in the Criminal Law Section
THREE HONORABLE MENTION PRIZES:
- $ 1000 cash prize
- Each of the papers awarded Honorable Mention status will be published in the Criminal Law Journal, the official quarterly publication of the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar of California
- One-year student membership in the Criminal Law Section
The Criminal Law Section of the California Lawyer’s Association (formerly the Criminal Law Section of the California State Bar) is pleased to announce the 2024 Marshall M. Schulman Annual Competition for Student Papers in Criminal Law and/or Criminal Procedure. This is a nationwide competition; while the focus is on California law, past winners have included students attending schools from coast to coast.
ELIGIBILITY
To be eligible for consideration, the paper must be written solely by a student enrolled in law school at the time the author submits a paper to this Competition. First-year law students are encouraged to submit entries.
CONTEST RULES
The paper must pertain to criminal law and/or to criminal procedure, with a particular focus on contemporary issues of concern in the State of California. The paper should be original and scholarly. It should be appropriately and carefully annotated to reflect the authorities that support the author’s opinions and findings, and upon which the author otherwise relies. It need not be a law review “note”-style document; past winners have included articles about new developments in criminal procedure, sentencing alternatives, and other topics that may be controversial yet may be dealt with more brevity. Any and all submissions will be received.
Papers should be between 1,500 and 4,500 words in length, including any citations, and should follow the citation style of The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation. Papers that have previously been published in a book, journal, magazine, or newspaper are not eligible.
Papers submitted to the Marshall M. Schulman Student Writing Competition must be e-mailed no later than midnight, Sunday, May 12, 2024. Submissions must be accompanied by an e-mail cover letter verifying the author’s current law school enrollment and authorizing the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar to publish the paper in the California Criminal Law Journal. The papers should in Word Format, and sent by email attachment to competition coordinator, Anne Perry at anne.perry@usdoj.gov. RESULTS OF THE COMPETITION WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2024.
JUDGING
The papers will be judged by members of the Criminal Law Executive Committee, who will evaluate the papers on their originality and informational value, as well as the quality of the author’s legal research, writing and analysis. The decision of the judges is final. Papers must be of publishable quality, and the Criminal Law Section reserves the right not to award one or more of the listed prizes, if, in the sole opinion of the judges, the papers submitted in the Competition do not meet its standards.
The Criminal Law Section reserves the right to edit the papers that are selected for publication.
For more information about the competition, please see http://calawyers.org/Sections/Criminal-Law/Student-Writing-Competition