the Annual Professor John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition

The Professor John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition is not currently accepting entries – please check back for updates!

Requirements from previous competition years are as follows:

Maximum length: 35 double-spaced pages, 12pt Times New Roman font (including footnotes, which may be single-spaced, 10pt Times New Roman font).

Prize Awarded: 1st place – $500 and publication in PELR. 2nd and 3rd place – consideration of publication in PELR.

Criteria for judging entries will be organization, practicality, originality, quality of research, clarity of style.

The competition, created to encourage and recognize student contributions to environmental law, is named after Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus John Nolon. The competition honors Professor Nolon’s dedication to student scholarship. Professor Nolon supervises student research and publications regarding land use, sustainable development, climate change, housing insecurity, racial inequity, and the coronavirus pandemic at Haub Law. He is also co-counsel to the Law School’s Land Use Law Center, which he founded in 1993. He served as Adjunct Professor of land use law and policy at the Yale School of the Environment from 2001-2016. Before he joined the law school faculty, he founded and directed the Housing Action Counsel to foster the development of affordable housing.

Previous Professor John R. Nolon Student Writing Competition Winners:

• 2023-2024 First Place: Brianna Grimes (Haub Law ’24), The Formula for “Sustainable” Tuna
  2023-2024 Second Place: Isabella Mazzei (Haub Law LLM), Arbitrators of Environmental Disputes: The Guardians of Natural Resources
  2023-2024 Third Place: Isabelle Hayes (Haub Law ’24), NGO Partnerships Providing Legitimacy to Private Environmental Governance
• 2022–2023 First Place: Christen Maccone (Haub Law ’23), Should Environmental Protection be Through Anthropocentric Rights?