List of Past Contest Winners

Each year, the Princeton Legal Journal hosts an essay contest for high school students focused around a new, timely theme. The top three essays each year are published by the Princeton Legal Journal.

2026 Competition Theme:

Religious Liberty in American Law and Public Life

Submissions for the 2026 High School Essay Contest have been reviewed. Congratulations to this year’s contest winners!

  • Sacred Ground and the Substantial Burden: Religious Liberty’s Indigenous Exception

    By Priscilla L. Ho — In mid-March 2026, the U.S. Forest Service completed the transfer of 2,422 acres of the Tonto National Forest, including Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, or Oak Flat, to Resolution Copper. The deposit beneath Oak Flat is one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in North America. Resolution Copper plans to extract it through…

  • Landor v. Louisiana: Placing a Much-Needed Price on Religious Oppression

    By Mollie Mei — You can be an atheist. You can be a Buddhist. You can be a Hindu, or a Christian, or just about any religious identity that exists. What you cannot be, at least according to the First Amendment, is deprived of your right to follow and practice your religion. Even the institutions…

  • What Should Replace Employment Division v. Smith, If Anything at All?

    By Arit Mukherjee — Does the Free Exercise Clause mandate religious exemptions to facially neutral, generally applicable laws? In Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the Supreme Court answered in the negative. This precedent has been challenged before (see Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), where three Justices wrote separately…

Honorable mentions:

Akshaj Ban — Aanya Thakur — Debasmita Mishra


Previous Competition Winners

2025 Winners

Honorable mentions:

Leah Park — Jason Chung — Shivansh Bansal — Shloka Vishweshwar

2024 Winners

Honorable mentions:

Ekaterina Chasovnikova — Ellie Sohn — Pranav Gorty

2023 Winners

Honorable mentions:

Deirdre Chau — Carson Loveless — Erica Yip — Yike Zhang