Press Release
Contact:
Jim Greif
[email protected]
(202) 296-1593
Washington, D.C. (November 13, 2018) – The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) has announced the winners of the 2019 AALS Scholarly Papers Competition for law school faculty members in the field for five years or fewer.
The competition’s selection committee recognized the following outstanding papers:
Winners
Maureen E. Brady, Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Law “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds.”
James D. Nelson, Assistant Professor, University of Houston Law Center, “Corporate Disestablishment.”
In “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” Professor Brady explores the social and legal context surrounding the use of metes and bounds to survey and describe property in the American colonial era. She argues that the metes and bounds system carried neglected benefits for American settlers and uses this history to illustrate the value of customization as well as standardization within property regimes. The draft article is available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Yale Law Journal.
“The AALS Property Section supported me even as a first-year professor by hosting a New Voices panel at the annual meeting, and I have enjoyed the conference and the Scholarly Papers session since that first invitation,” said Professor Brady. “As a result, it’s especially gratifying to receive this honor for this project, which uses history to probe property theory and to explore questions about institutional design. I hope that my work will prove influential not just as a piece of forgotten American legal history, but also because the story provides broader lessons about the connections between property and economic development.”
In “Corporate Disestablishment,” Professor Nelson identifies and defends a set of legal principles limiting corporate religious liberty in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The article will be published in an upcoming issue of the Virginia Law Review.
“I am honored to receive the AALS Scholarly Papers Competition Award,” Professor Nelson said. “I am also very grateful to the University of Houston Law Center for supporting my research and to the committee for making this selection. I look forward to sharing my work at the AALS Annual Meeting.”
The AALS Committee to Review Scholarly Papers for the 2019 Annual Meeting included distinguished legal scholars from around the country:
• Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of Law
• Brad Areheart, University of Tennessee College of Law
• Eric Chaffee, University of Toledo College of Law, Chair
• Martha Chamallas, The Ohio State University, Michael E. Moritz College of Law
• Jessica Silbey, Northeastern University School of Law
• David Sloss, Santa Clara University School of Law
• Aaron Tang, University of California, Davis, School of Law
The competition is now in its 33rd year and the awards will be presented during the 113th AALS Annual Meeting, January 2-6, 2019 in New Orleans.
About AALS
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS), founded in 1900, is a nonprofit association of 179 member and 18 fee-paid law schools. Its members enroll most of the nation’s law students and produce the majority of the country’s lawyers and judges, as well as many of its lawmakers. The mission of AALS is to uphold and advance excellence in legal education. In support of this mission, AALS promotes the core values of excellence in teaching and scholarship, academic freedom, and diversity, including diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints, while seeking to improve the legal profession, to foster justice, and to serve its many communities—local, national and international.
