J. Reuben Clark Law Society
Religious Liberty Student Writing Competition

 

Scroll down to view the 2026 contest winners and winning papers! 

Contest Purpose

The purpose of this competition is to promote legal and academic studies in the field of religious liberty by current second- and third-year law students enrolled in Juris Doctorate programs at U.S. law schools.*

Form & Content

Scholarly papers containing original content relating to the topic of religious liberty in the context of U.S. Constitutional law, with a length of between 9,000 and 13,000 words, including footnotes. Eligible papers must be written by a single author, typed, thoroughly cited, and presented in a format suitable for publication, with no additional editing required. Papers must conform to Bluebook requirements and may include footnotes. Papers prepared for academic coursework are permitted. Papers may not have been edited for publication prior to submission to the competition.

Submisson Requirements

All papers must be submitted on or before January 31st of the applicable year. Papers should be e-mailed to jrcls.relib.contest@gmail.com in .pdf or .docx formats. The cover email should note the following: Submitter’s name, law school, year in school, and the word count of the paper being submitted. E-mail confirmation will be sent to confirm paper submission. Questions regarding submissions may be directed to jrcls.relib.contest@gmail.com. Papers cannot have been accepted for publication elsewhere at the time of submission. However, once submission to this competition has been made, authors are free to submit papers to law journals for publication.

Papers must entirely be the work of the author, and all submissions will be scanned for plagiarism and AI generation.

* The Religious Liberty Student Writing Competition is generously funded by the Maud Birkin Endowment to BYU Law School. This endowment establishes the terms of the competition, including eligibility requirements.

Awards

Winners will receive the following:

• Top three places: Automatic acceptance into the JRCLS Religious Liberty Fellowship for the applicable year.
• Cash awards:

FIRST PLACE	$4,000 cash award
SECOND PLACE	$3,000 cash award
THIRD PLACE	$2,000 cash award
HONORABLE MENTION	Up to three $1,000 cash awards

  

 

 

 

Winner Selection

Papers will be reviewed by a panel of judges for conformity to the above requirements and for substantive treatment of the topic. Winners will be notified by mid-March of the applicable year. Awards will be presented at a dinner held in conjunction with the Religious Liberty Fellowship in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

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Winners

2026 Religious Liberty Student Writing Competition 

1st Place	Simon Brake	University of Notre Dame	3L	“Are Religious Nondiscrimination Clauses Religion-Neutral ?"
2nd Place	Brant Lunt	Brigham Young University	2L	"Clocking In on Religious Freedom: Why the Ministerial Exception Should Extend to FLSA Claims"
3rd Place	Nathan Frank	Catholic University	3L	“Preferred Pronouns after 303 Creative:”
Honorable Mention	Taha Syed	Georgetown University	3L	“From Founding Fears to Fringe Theories: Article VI and Myth of the Muslim President” This piece will be forthcoming in Volume 115.1 of the Georgetown Law Journal. A link will be made available once the article is published. Abstract: This Note excavates the constitutional and cultural origins of a persistent question in American political imagination: whether a Muslim could—or should—serve as President of the United States.  Drawing on founding-era debates, intellectual history, and early American encounters with Islam, this Note argues that the “Muslim president” hypothetical functioned as a central rhetorical device for contesting the scope of religious liberty. At the Founding, Islam operated both as a symbol of feared alterity and as a limiting case that tested the sincerity of commitments to freedom of conscience. By tracing how Anti-Federalists invoked the specter of Muslim officeholding to resist Article VI’s No Religious Test Clause—and how Federalists defended that very possibility as a principled necessity—this Note shows that the constitutional inclusion of Muslims was both deliberate and deeply contested. The Note situates these debates within the broader contradictions of the early republic, including the intellectual influence of Enlightenment critiques of Islam, the diplomatic and material presence of Muslims in early America, and the erasure of enslaved Muslims from constitutional narratives.  The Note then turns to the modern period to show that, despite Article VI’s formal prohibition on religious tests, informal and cultural barriers continue to replicate the exclusions the Clause was designed to eliminate. Episodes involving Muslim public officials and candidates demonstrate how suspicion of Muslim identity operates as a de facto qualification for office, revealing a persistent gap between constitutional text and political practice.  Ultimately, this Note contends that the “myth” of the Muslim president endures not because the Constitution is indeterminate, but because American political culture has yet to fully absorb the radical implications of Article VI. The Founders’ willingness to accept—even if only in theory—the possibility of a Muslim president reflects a constitutional commitment that remains only partially realized today.