Award for Exemplary Student Research Winners

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Ross-Blakley Law Library Award for Exemplary Student Research. Their papers demonstrate sophistication and originality in the use of research materials, exceptional innovation in research strategy, and skillful synthesis of research results into a comprehensive scholarly analysis.

The Ross-Blakley Law Library Award for Exemplary Student Research is an annual award which serves as a means to showcase extraordinary student research. If you are a 2L or 3L and would like to enter the competition, please consult the Award for Exemplary Student Research page.

First Place

2025: Elizabeth Kness, Agencies Changing Course: Conservation as a Land Use in BLM's Public Lands Rule.

2024: Seth Young, Hope for the Hopi: How Certification Marks Can Help the Hopi Tribe Protect its Most Colorful Crop.

2023: Lauren Krumholz, Public Health Consequences of Appellate Standards for Hostile Work Environment Claims.

2022: Claire Newfeld, Indian Boarding School Deaths and the Federal Tort Claims Act: A Route to a Remedy.

2021: Sarah Brunswick, PFAS Are Forever: Why Unregulated Agricultural Water Is Not a Girl’s Best Friend.

2020: Brent Bihr, Dark Patterns, Warcraft, and Cybersex: The Addictive Face of Predatory Online Platforms and Pioneering Policies to Protect Consumers.

2019: Walter Johnson, Governance Tools for the Second Quantum Revolution.

2018: Steven Perlmutter, High Times Ahead: Products Liability in Medical Marijuana.

2017: Chelsea Gulinson, Embryonic Stem Cell Tourism.

2016: Robert Skousen, Redefining New Water: Inland Surface and Groundwater Desalination.

2015: Racheal White Hawk, A New Formula for Tribal Internet Gaming.

2014: Jeremiah Chin, Red Law, White Supremacy: Cherokee Freedmen, Tribal Sovereignty and the Colonial Feedback Loop.

2013: Lily Yan, Uncharted Domains and the New Land Rush: Indigenous Rights to Top-Level Domain.

Second Place

2025: Kyrah Berthiaume, Protecting Public Health amid Misinformation and Scientific Illiteracy: Federal Actions Necessitating State Interventions.

2024: Melissa Alter, Undoing Past (In)Jury: Adapting to the Loss of Peremptory Challenges.

2023: Katharine Greer, Arizona's Failure: Advocating for an Affirmative Defense for Sex-Trafficking Victims in Line with Feminist Legal Reasoning.

2022: Joanna Jandali, Jammed from Justice: How International Organization Immunity Enshrines Impunity.

2021: Kole Lyons, Fresh from the Freezer: Exploring the "Knead" for Transparent Bread Labeling.

2020: Olivia Stitz, Comity, Tipping Points, and Commercial Significance: What to expect of the Hague Judgments Convention.

2019 (tie): Grant Frazier, Using Your Head: A Different Approach to Tackling the NFL's Concussion Epidemic.

2019 (tie): Jack Milligan, Malmin v. State's Ipse Dixit: Arizona's Article II, § 8 Is Not of the "Same General Effect and Purpose" as the Fourth Amendment.

2018: Celeste Robertson, When Bitcoins Buy Opioids: Why Amending the Federal Money Laundering Statutes is Necessary to Combat the Opioid Crisis.

2017: Jameson Rammell, Polarizing Procedures: Transsexual Inmates, Sex Reassignment Surgery, and the Eighth Amendment.

2016: Simon Goldenberg, Considering Abusive Marriages in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community and Ways for Agunot to Escape.

2015: Glennas'ba Augborne, The HEARTH Act: Implementing UN Indigenous Rights Norms to Reconcile the Limitations of Tribal Environmental Sovereignty.

2014: Jennifer Walston, Arizona’s Domestic Violence Victims Need a More Safety-Centered Approach in Their Pursuit of Family Court Orders.

2013: Tim Forsman, What the QSA Means for the Salton Sea: California’s Big Blank Check.