Brumby Distinguished Professor in First Amendment Law Sonja R. West received the Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research on Media Law and Policy for her co-authored article "The U.S. Supreme Court's Characterizations of the Press: An Empirical Study" in the North Carolina Law Review (with R.A. Jones). The award is presented annually by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication to recognize the "best mass communications law research" with preference "given to research with a strong theoretical component that demonstrates the potential to have a lasting influence on freedom of expression scholarship." Notably, West received the award in 2017 for her article "The ‘Press,’ Then & Now" in the Ohio State Law Journal.