2025 High School Essay Contest
Each year, the Princeton Legal Journal hosts an essay contest for high school students focused around a new, timely theme. Submissions for this year’s contest are currently open and will close on April 25, 2025. The top three essays will be published by the Princeton Legal Journal.
2025 Competition Theme:
Presidential Power and the American Constitution
Submissions for our 2025 high school essay contest are now open! Essays must explore this year’s theme, which centers on presidential power, broadly conceived, under the United States Constitution. Possible topics include, but are certainly not limited to: presidential immunity, the scope and reach of the President’s removal power, the President’s war powers, the pardon power, the administrative state, the major questions doctrine, presidential authority in times of national emergency, and the “take care” clause. This prompt is purposely broad in scope in order to give participants space to delve into an area of the law that uniquely interests them.
The competition is open to all current high school students graduating in or after May 2025. International students are welcome to participate. Each individual may submit only one piece. Submissions must be a personal piece of work, containing proper citations if applicable (Chicago or Bluebook is acceptable).
The deadline for submissions is April 25, 2025. A submission form will open on this website at least one week before the deadline. Each entrant will be charged a $15 submission dollar fee. Submissions must be no shorter than 1,500 words and no longer than 3,000 words, excluding footnotes.
To ensure anonymized review, please do not include any identifying information, including name, class year, or institution, in your essay’s body or metadata. Failure to anonymize your essay may disqualify it from consideration by the Selection Committee.
A Selection Committee will consider all submissions anonymously. Winners will be announced in late May 2025. Authors who submit winning essays commit to publication in the Princeton Legal Journal and agree to participate in our full editing process. This process involves both structural and substantive suggestions, as well as source citing for content.
Please direct any questions concerning the competition to ec3928@princeton.edu and nv9344@princeton.edu.
We look forward to reading your submissions
Previous Competition Winners
2024 Winners
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CONTEST WINNER
Online Defamation: First Amendment Rights and Legal Standards for Unmasking the Identities of Anonymous Defendants
Luke Hwang — Lee Sun-kyun, a renowned South Korean actor for his role in the Oscar-winning film Parasite, tragically took his life in December 2023.[1] Lee had been facing a police investigation over allegations of illegal drug use, despite his constant reiteration of his unawareness of any consumption. Throughout this time, Korean media outlets sensationalized…
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CONTEST WINNER
Limiting Corporate Speech without Coercion? The Potential Application of Consent-by-Registration Statutes to Protected Expression
By Maclain Conlin — The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants corporations a substantive right to be free from civil claims in state court unless it is either incorporated in that state or the conduct at issue in the case occurred there. However, in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway,[1] the Supreme Court held in…
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CONTEST WINNER
Speak Up: Speech First, Inc v. Sands, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech on College Campuses
By Matt Berkery — College campuses – petri dishes of civic activism – have long served as epicenters of First Amendment exercise, providing a sprawling platform for demonstrations, displays of expression, and free speech. As the youth demographic (18-29) becomes increasingly consequential in U.S. elections, as demonstrated by its role in thwarting the “red wave”…
Honorable mentions:
Ekaterina Chasovnikova — Ellie Sohn — Pranav Gorty
2023 Winners
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CONTEST WINNER
Google Monopoly: Searching for a Tech Competition Precedent
By Kaylee Yang — You open your phone to check the results of last night’s basketball game. Open Safari. Tap the address bar. Type in “March Madness results”. A custom widget appears. As you get ready for your day, you ask Siri for the weather. She relays what Google told her: sunny with showers in…
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CONTEST WINNER
The High Stakes of Deepfakes: The Growing Necessity of Federal Legislation to Regulate This Rapidly Evolving Technology
By Caroline Quirk — From its nascent development in the 1990s to the introduction of a widely available app in 2018, deepfake technology has become both increasingly sophisticated and readily accessible to the general population.[1] Deepfake—a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake”—is a form of synthetic media in which artificial intelligence is utilized to create…
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CONTEST WINNER
Carpenter v. United States, the Stored Communications Act, & the Third Party Doctrine in the Digital Age
By Beatrice Neilson — Congressional inaction on data privacy is leaving courts, corporations, and consumers in the dark, stranded and sacked with the responsibility of resolving some of the most complex problems of the digital age all on their own. Amid the chaos, social media companies collect vast amounts of user metadata for their algorithms,[1]…
Honorable mentions:
Deirdre Chau — Carson Loveless — Erica Yip — Yike Zhang