Call for Papers: Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum

2020 Junior Faculty Forum

Hosted by Stanford, Harvard, and Yale Law Schools

Request for Submissions

Stanford, Yale, and Harvard Law Schools announce the 21st session of the Junior Faculty Forum to be held at Stanford Law School on June 1-2, 2020 and seek submissions for its meeting.

The Forum’s objective is to encourage the work of scholars recently appointed to a tenure- track position by providing experience in the pursuit of scholarship and the nature of the scholarly exchange. Meetings are held each year, rotating at Stanford, Yale, and Harvard.

Twelve to twenty scholars (with one to seven years in teaching) will be chosen on a blind basis from among those submitting papers to present. One or more senior scholars, not necessarily from Stanford, Yale, or Harvard, will comment on each paper. The audience will include the participating junior faculty, faculty from the host institutions, and invited guests. The goal is discourse both on the merits of particular papers and on appropriate methodologies for doing work in that genre. We hope that comment and discussion will communicate what counts as good work among successful senior scholars and will also challenge and improve the standards that now obtain. The Forum also hopes to increase the sense of community among American legal scholars generally, particularly among new and veteran professors.

TOPICS: Each year the Forum invites submissions on selected legal topics. For the upcoming 2020 meeting, the topics will cover the following areas of the law:

Administrative Law

Constitutional Law—theoretical foundations Constitutional Law—historical foundations Criminal Law

Critical Legal Studies Environmental Law 

Family Law

Jurisprudence and Philosophy 

Law and Humanities

Legislation and Statutory Interpretation 

Public International Law

Race/Gender Studies/Antidiscrimination Workplace Law and Social Welfare Policy

A jury of accomplished scholars, again not necessarily from Yale, Stanford or Harvard, with expertise in the particular topic will choose the papers to be presented. There is no publication commitment. Stanford, Yale, or Harvard will pay presenters’ and commentators’ travel expenses, though international flights may be only partially reimbursed.

QUALIFICATIONS: Authors who teach law in the U.S. in a tenured or tenure-track position and have not been teaching at either of those ranks for a total of more than seven years are eligible to submit their work. American citizens or permanent residents teaching abroad are also eligible provided that they have held a faculty position or the equivalent, including positions comparable to junior faculty positions in research institutions, for less than seven years and that they earned their last degree after 2010. We accept jointly authored submissions, but each of the coauthors must be individually eligible to participate in the Forum. Papers that will be published prior to Forum are not eligible. There is no limit on the number of submissions by any individual author. Faculty from Stanford, Yale, and Harvard Law Schools are not eligible.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Electronic submissions should be uploaded via our online Submission Form. The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 14, 2020. Please remove all references to the author(s) in the paper. Each paper may only be considered under one topic. Any questions about the submission procedure should be directed both to Professor Norman Spaulding (nspaulding@law.stanford.edu) and the forum conference coordinator, Stephanie Basso (jff@law.stanford.edu)

FURTHER INFORMATION: Inquiries concerning the Forum should be sent to Norman Spaulding (nspaulding@law.stanford.edu) at Stanford Law School, Christine Jolls (christine.jolls@yale.edu) or Yair Listokin (yair.listokin@yale.edu) at Yale Law  School, or Matthew Stephenson (mstephen@law.harvard.edu) or Rebecca Tushnet (rtushnet@law.harvard.edu) at Harvard Law School.