GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER AWARD

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR YEAR 2012

The Law and Society Association is seeking nominations for its 2012 Graduate Student Award which will be presented during the 2012 International Conference on Law and Society, to be held June 5-8 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawai’i. The award will go to the research paper written by a graduate or law student (including graduate law students) that best represents outstanding law and society research. Unrevised dissertation chapters or extracts should not be submitted but stand-alone papers incorporating substantial dissertation material are eligible.  The test is whether the paper is in a form that could be submitted to a scholarly journal.  Papers co-authored by students are eligible but papers co-authored with faculty are not. The prize includes a plaque and up to $500 toward travel costs to attend the awards presentation at the meeting.  In the case of co-authors or if the Awards Committee names two winners, each winner will be awarded a plaque and the $500 prize will be divided among the winners. 

We seek an expanded pool of submissions, and we urge LSA members to submit graduate papers you admire whether or not they were written under your supervision.  In this connection think not just of current and to-be-submitted work, but also recall outstanding work you read last academic year.  It does not matter whether the author is currently enrolled; students who have already completed their degrees are eligible. In addition, publication does not affect award eligibility, but papers that have been once submitted are not eligible for reconsideration. So long as a paper was written within the time frame indicated below, it is eligible for this award.  The committee will consider any paper that examines law, or law-like systems including legal institutions, in culture and society.   There are no methods constraint on what may be submitted.  Statistical, other social scientific, interpretive, historical and jurisprudential approaches are all welcome.  Past awards have gone to papers of all types. 

To Have a Student's Work Considered for the Award: (1) Only non-student members of the Law and Society Association may make nominations for the Graduate Student Award.  (2) The paper must have been written for a course between September 2010 and December 2011 by a matriculated graduate or graduate professional student at any institution of higher education. Papers originally written for a class within this same time period and subsequently published are still eligible for nomination. In submitting the paper for award consideration, the nominator must include the date and title of the course for which the paper was written. (3) Submissions must be in English; translations from other languages into English are welcome. (4) The paper must be double-spaced; may not exceed 18,0000 words in length, including notes and references; and must be in a minimum of 12 point font.  (5) Each submission must contain a detailed abstract of at least 200 words. (6) The paper must be submitted to the Committee on Student Awards via email. The Committee will be chaired by Helena Silverstein (Government and Law, Lafayette College), and includes Tamir Moustafa (International Studies, Simon Fraser University), Carmela Murdocca (Socio-Legal Studies, York University), Michael Paris (Politics and Law, City University of New York, Staten Island), and Jill Weinberg (Sociology, Northwestern University & American Bar Foundation).

All submissions are due by February 1, 2012 (transmission date). Files must be in Word or PDF format. Email by February 1, 2012 to:  Helena Silverstein <silversh@lafayette.edu>