Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “Pursuit of Justice”
Legal Writing Competition
2026
The Philadelphia Bar Association is pleased to announce the 2026 Legal Writing Competition in honor of the late Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In so doing, the Bar Association recognizes the importance of excellence in legal writing and seeks to award a student enrolled in an ABA-approved Philadelphia-area law school for authoring a top-quality competition submission. The following information is provided to encourage your participation.
ELIGIBILITY
The Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “Pursuit of Justice” Legal Writing Competition is open to full-time and part-time law students who completed their second or third year of study by the end of the 2025-2026 academic year at one of the following six institutions: Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Rutgers Law School, Temple University Beasley School of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law and Widener University Delaware Law School. Part-time law students who were in their third or later year of study during the 2025-2026 academic year are also eligible. Students must be or have been in good standing at their institutions. Other than being published in a law review or journal at the student’s law school, as described further in the fifth bullet point of the Rules section below, the submission may not have been previously published. The submission also may not have been submitted for any other competition during the time when it is under consideration for this competition. The submission must be the work of one author alone (joint submissions will not be considered), and the author must certify that the submission has been prepared without substantial editing from others.
TOPIC
Candidates may submit a law review quality submission on any topic relating to rights, privileges, and responsibilities under federal law.
AWARDS
The author of the first-place submission will receive a cash award of $2,500 and the publication of the winning submission in The Philadelphia Lawyer and on the Bar Association’s website and/or in an appropriate Bar Association publication. The winner of the first-place award will be invited to the Annual Meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association, at which time the award will be presented.
If the Bar Association, in its discretion, determines that it is appropriate, it may also award second and third place prizes. The authors of the second and third place entries will be announced in The Philadelphia Lawyer.
The Bar Association reserves the right to require editing of the first-place submission, if necessary, to ensure that the submission is of publishable quality. The Bar Association also reserves the right to make no award.
JUDGING
A committee of practicing attorneys, professors and judges will evaluate the submissions for the purpose of granting the awards. The submissions will be judged anonymously. All submissions will be transmitted to the judges electronically with author and law school identifying information and related metadata removed. If, nonetheless, a judge recognizes a submission or its author, the judge shall refrain from evaluating that specific submission. With that exception only, each judge shall independently evaluate all submissions on a form provided, applying the following established criteria:
- Originality and importance of topic
- Thoroughness of research
- Depth of analysis
- Organization of analysis
- Writing style
- Form, quality, and placement of citations
- Conformity with rules of the competition
After all evaluation sheets are completed and returned by the judges, the Bar Association will average all scores and the submission with the highest overall score will receive the first-place award. If the Bar Association chooses to give second and third place awards, the submissions with the next two highest overall scores will receive those awards.
RULES
All submissions:
- Must be no longer than 20 pages or 5000 words, whichever is shorter. The 5000-word limitation refers to the text of the submission; footnotes may be a maximum of 2000 words (in addition to the 5000-word maximum for text). Do not use endnotes.
- Must be in 12-point Times New Roman font. Footnotes must be in no smaller than 10-point Times New Roman font.
- Must use citations that conform with either Darby Dickerson & the Association of Legal Writing Directors, ALWD Guide to Legal Citation (7th ed., Wolters Kluwer 2021) or Harvard Law Review Association, et al., A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed. 2020).
- Must be in seminar paper or law journal article format only; submissions in the form of a memorandum, brief, judicial opinion, or other type of legal document will not be accepted.
- May not be previously published or currently accepted for publication in any publication other than in connection with the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “Pursuit of Justice” Legal Writing Competition other than a journal or law review of the participant’s school.
- Must have 1” margins on all sides.
- Must be submitted in electronic form via e-mail to communications@philabar.org with the subject line “Ginsburg Writing Competition Submission” unless submission of a hard copy is requested and approved. Requests for submission of a hard copy should be made by e-mailing rkipp@philabar.org.
- Must be submitted with only the title on the first page of the submission. Each submission shall be accompanied by a separate one-page document stating the author’s name, law school, expected or actual date of graduation, telephone number(s), e-mail address(es), mailing address(es) and an abstract of no longer than 100 words describing the thesis of the submission. This document, which shall be signed by the person submitting the entry, shall also certify the word count of the submission and certify that the work is solely the work of the author. The author must also certify that the text of the submission is no longer than 5000 words, and the footnotes are no longer than 2000 words.
- Other than as noted on the one-page document identifying the author and describing the submission noted above, the submission may not otherwise refer to the identity of the author or the author’s law school. This includes direct identification by name, or indirect identification by, for example, reference to the size or location of the law school, and the like.
- Receipt will be acknowledged.
- A submission that does not comply with any of the above requirements will be rejected without further review.
- All submissions must be received by no later than Monday, August 3, 2026.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF AWARDS
Determination of the first, and if chosen, second and third place awards, will be made in fall 2026 and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. The winner of the first-place award is expected to be presented with the award at an event selected by the Philadelphia Bar Association. The Bar Association will waive the cost of attendance at the program for the recipient; however, the winner is expected to bear any travel and accommodation costs associated with attending the event.
