Deadline: Submissions must be emailed or postmarked by February 13, 2009, 11:59pm EST. Papers postmarked after this date will not be considered. Papers may be emailed to cudahy@acslaw.org. Papers may also be sent in hardcopy to the following address:
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy
Attn: Cudahy Writing Competition
1333 H St. NW, 11th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Eligibility: The competition is open to all. Practicing lawyers, policymakers, academics, and law students all are encouraged to take part. Coauthored submissions are eligible and if selected, the coauthors will share the prize. Each submission must be an original academic work that is either unpublished or was published no more than one year prior to the competition deadline (specifically, not before January 2008). If a submission has been published or accepted for publication, the author should consult the journal to make sure it will consent to ACS posting the publication on its website, with appropriate attribution.

Content: Submissions should be related to regulatory or administrative law, broadly construed. Appropriate subjects include empirical or comparative analyses of the effectiveness of specific regulatory regimes or of deregulation, doctrinal investigations of the development of administrative law rules or principles by courts and administrative agencies and the effects of that development, and normative analyses of how particular regulatory or administrative regimes or deregulation advance or fail to advance values of fairness, participation, and transparency.

Format: A wide range of formats are eligible and encouraged, from traditional full-length law review articles to less academic, lightly footnoted essays written to be accessible to a wide audience. Submissions should be less than 25,000 words. Shorter submissions are strongly encouraged.

Judging Process: All submissions will go through an initial screening process. Finalists from that process will be reviewed by the panel of judges. Submissions will be judged on their depth of analysis, quality of writing, readiness for publication, originality (in topic selection and treatment), and thoroughness of research. The winner will be announced at the Summer 2009 ACS National Convention. The 2009 Panel of Judges will be announced by the end of the year.