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The Marshall Manne Schulman Competition for Student Papers in Criminal Law and/or Criminal Procedure

The Criminal Law Section of the California Lawyers Association is pleased to announce the Marshall M. Schulman Annual Competition for Student Papers in Criminal Law and/or Criminal Procedure.  This is a nationwide competition; while the focus is on California law, past winners have included students attending schools from coast to coast.

Prizes

Grand Prize

  • $2,500 cash prize
  • The Grand Prize: winning paper will be published in the Criminal Law Journal, the official quarterly publication of the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar of California
  • One-year student membership in the Criminal Law Section

Three Honorable Mention Prizes

  • $1,000 cash prize
  • Each of the papers awarded Honorable Mention status will be published in the Criminal Law Journal, the official quarterly publication of the Criminal Law Section of the California Lawyers Association
  • One-year student membership in the Criminal Law Section

Eligibility

To be eligible for consideration, the paper must be written solely by a student enrolled in law school at the time the author submits a paper to this Competition.   First-year law students are encouraged to submit entries.

Contest Rules

The paper must pertain to criminal law and/or to criminal procedure, with a particular focus on contemporary issues of concern in the State of California.  The paper should be original and scholarly.  It should be appropriately and carefully annotated to reflect the authorities that support the author’s opinions and findings, and upon which the author otherwise relies.  It need not be a law review “note”-style document; past winners have included articles about new developments in criminal procedure, sentencing alternatives, and other topics that may be controversial yet may be dealt with more brevity.  Any and all submissions will be received.

Papers should be between 1,500 and 4,500 words in length, including any citations, and should follow the citation style of The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation.  Papers that have previously been published in a book, journal, magazine, or newspaper are not eligible.

Papers submitted to the Competition must be in Word format and sent by e-mail attachment to CriminalLaw@calawyers.org

Papers submitted to the Marshall M. Schulman Student Writing Competition must be e-mailed no later than midnight, Sunday, April 30, 2023.  Submissions must be accompanied by an e-mail cover letter verifying the author’s current law school enrollment and authorizing the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar to publish the paper in the California Criminal Law Journal

Judging

The papers will be judged by members of the Criminal Law Executive Committee, who will evaluate the papers on their originality and informational value, as well as the quality of the author’s legal research, writing and analysis.  The decision of the judges is final.  Papers must be of publishable quality, and the Criminal Law Section reserves the right not to award one or more of the listed prizes, if, in the sole opinion of the judges, the papers submitted in the Competition do not meet its standards.

The Criminal Law Section reserves the right to edit the papers that are selected for publication.


Marshall Schulman

Marshall Shulman first started practicing law in 1953 after graduating from Loyola Law School. He began working as a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office in 1956. As a prosecutor, Marshall handled several high profile cases, including prosecution of the “Onion Field” murder case. After nearly 10 years of service as a prosecutor, Marshall left the office to begin a successful criminal defense practice in Santa Ana.

In 2002, Marshall moved his practice to San Francisco, a location closer to his wife’s family. He served for many years as a member and then advisor of the Executive Committee of the Criminal Law Section. He states that what he liked most about his service on the Committee was “the camaraderie between the defense lawyers and prosecutors.” Marshall was instrumental in implementing the policy of balancing defense and prosecution members on the Committee.

In addition to his service to the Criminal Law Section, Marshall was a past President of the Orange County chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, was elected into the American College of Trial Attorneys and the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, and was one of the founders of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. He was instrumental in developing the State Bar Criminal Law Specialization program.

When asked to sum up his thoughts about the practice of criminal law, Marshall stated, “it is the most challenging, interesting, and rewarding area of the practice of law. I enjoy my colleagues and my opponents. I find that it is a highly ethical practice, which is surprising to most people. I am going to miss it terribly.”

2022 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • Grand Prize Winner: Sabah Azam, Golden Gate University School of Law, Constitutional Rights of Religious Observances of Incarcerated Muslims in State Prisons in The United States
  • Honorable Mention: Alexandra Ferri, Wake Forest School of Law, In a Dog-Eat-Dog World, What Does a Man Have to Do to Protect His Best Friend?
  • Honorable Mention: Emmalee Johnston, New Mexico School of Law, From Invisibility to Hyper-Visibility: How Hate Crime Legislation May Better Redress and Deter Anti-Asian Hate Crimes
  • Honorable Mention: Jonathan Greenbergs, University of San Diego School of Law, Criminal Beneficiaries and Decedents’ Rights
2021 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • Grand Prize Winner: Jennifer Corcoran, University of Pennsylvania, Relying on Good Faith as a Judicial Stopgap for Advancing Technology
  • Honorable Mention: Harold Cohen, University of Richmond Law School, Siri and the Fourth Amendment
  • Honorable Mention: Amanda Mannshahia, Loyola Law School, Under the Watchful Eye of the Public
  • Honorable Mention: Sean Murphy, Touro College of Law, Cell Phone Searches at the Border
  • Honorable Mention: William Lawton, Florida Coastal School of Law, Los Angeles v. Rettele: The Supreme Court’s Missing Totality of the Circumstances
2020 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • Grand Prize WinnerAlison Zoltowski, Western Michigan University Thomas M.Cooley Law School, The Tale of For Profit Commercial Bail and How It’s Gone Stale. 
  • Honorable Mention:  Bora Ndregjoni, Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of TechnologyUnlocking Fifth Amendment Protection: How California Law Prevents Compelled Biometric Features. 
  • Honorable Mention:  Jessica Bove, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, What “Extractly” Am I Consenting To? The Effects of Data Extraction on Consent.  
  • Honorable Mention: Matthew Fitzgerald, Vanderbilt Law School, Too-weak Notice? The Charging Conundrum Presented by Felony-Murder in California.  

Honorable Mention Winners:

  • Jennifer Roges, Loyola Law School Los AngelesMy Reputation or Your Freedom: What Should Be Considered for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims.  
  • Imara McMillan, University of Chicago Law School,  A ‘Meaningful Opportunity to Obtain Release’: Life after Miller and Montgomery for Juveniles Serving Life Without Parole Sentences.  
  • Kevin Frazier, University of California Berkeley School of Law, The Case for a Duty to Report: A Utilitarian and Retributivist Analysis.  
  • Joseph Brunett, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law, A Note on Differing Rights: California Probationers Have Varying Fourth Amendment Rights to the Privacy of Their Cell Phones. 
2019 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • The Grand Prize Winner: Daniel Aronsohn
    Enriching Our Nation’s History: Establishing a Historical Exception to Grand Jury Secrecy
  • Honorable Mention Winner: Katherine Ruth Carey
    Hidden Costs of Bail Reform: How Bail in California Could Go from Hurting Poor Defendants to Hurting Poor Counties 
  • Honorable Mention Winner: Brady O’Bryan
    Reevaluating the Threshold Question in the Wake of Carpenter and the Path of the Golden Stake Killer  
  • Honorable Mention Winner: Elica Zadeh
    A Welcome Fork in the Familiar Road: Restorative Justice as Diverting the Path of Schools to Prisons  
  • Honorable Mention Winner: George Emmons
    Domestic Violence Laws & the INA: How Domestic Violence Perpetrators Attain Immigration Benefits
2018 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • Grand Prize: Steve Demarest, NYU School of Law
    Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: ;A Thirteenth Amendment Framework for Challenging Racial Discrimination in Policing.
  • Honorable Mention: James Cooper IV, USF School of Law
    Conviction Integrity Units.
  • Honorable Mention: Ryan Harzell C. Balisacan, Harvard Law School
    Going Beyond the “Biased Prosecutor” Account: Exploring Cognitive Biases that can Affect Judges’ and Defense Attorneys’ Brady-Related Decisions.
  • Honorable Mention: Amber Fountain, Loyola Law School Los Angeles
    Paw and Order: ;Prison Dog Programs and Their Impact on Rehabilitation in the Criminal Justice System.
2017 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Contest Winners
  • Grand Prize: Kaitlin D. Back, University of Chicago
    More than Civil Death: Considering Collateral Consequences in Federal Sentencing,
  • Honorable Mention: Megan Helfend, Loyola Law School
    Education in Juvenile Detention Facilities: Inside How This Confined World Halts Chances For a Better Tomorrow
  • Honorable Mention: Alexandra James, Loyola Law School
    Death is Different…For Some
  • Honorable Mention: Sahar Karimi, Cal Western School of Law
    Using Riley v. California to Preserve Privacy in a Technological World: A Draft Petitioner’s Brief to the United States Supreme Court
  • Honorable Mention: Hayden Thomas, UCLA School of Law
    Prosecutors, Police and Grand Juries: How SB 227 Falls Short
  • Honorable Mention: J. Domenic Martini, USD School of Law
    Defining Violence: The Vagueness Doctrine in Criminal Removal Law

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