CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize

CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize

(The paper prize competition will open in March, 2025.)

The CSLS Graduate Student Paper Prize is awarded annually to a current Berkeley graduate student whose nominated paper, written while a graduate student at Berkeley within the 18 months prior to the nomination deadline, best represents outstanding law and society research.  Competitive papers also will speak to one or more of the Center’s areas of scholarly focus: criminal justice, democracy and civil society, or inequality.  The award carries a cash prize of $1,000.

Papers nominated for the prize must be (1) unpublished; (2) include an empirical component, broadly speaking (e.g., ethnography, interviews, historical research, survey data etc.); and (3) be no longer than 25,000 words, including references, in a minimum of 12 point font (papers that exceed this limit will not be considered).  Submissions must be in English.  Self-nominations are welcome, or papers may be nominated by a CSLS affiliated scholar.  Nominations by CSLS affiliated scholars should include a brief letter of support. In submitting the paper for award consideration, the nominator must include the date and title of the course (or equivalent context) for which the paper was written.

A paper will only be considered once for the prize.  Only one single-authored paper per author will be considered per award cycle; co-authored work is not eligible.

The paper and proof of current program registration (in PDF format) will be submitted to  csls@law.berkeley.edu  Papers received after the deadline will not be considered.