SJEL has partnered with the Washington Lawyers for Sustainability and Washington Journal for Environmental Law & Policy to host a sustainability symposium on April 20, 2012, at Seattle University. The event will focus on making sustainability legal, economically viable, and socially just. Presenters and speakers will include professors, practitioners, and elected officials.

As part of the symposium, WLS and SJEL are conducting a writing competition in which entries should address one of the three themes of the event:

1. Making Sustainability Legal:  Is the current framework of environmental laws capable of bringing about sustainable outcomes?  If not, what would a sustainable environmental legal regime look like, and how do we get there?
2. Making Sustainability Economically Viable:  How can we align the values of sustainability with economic forces and business imperatives so that providing sustainable goods and services through sustainable means becomes profitable now and financially viable for the long term?
3. Making Sustainability Socially Just:  How can we make sure that all segments of society benefit from adoption of sustainable practices, and that neither the externalities of unsustainable practices nor the costs and dislocations of moving to a more sustainable economy are imposed disproportionately or unfairly on those who can least afford them?

Entries from law students and legal scholars, including law school faculty and members of the bar, are welcome and will be judged in separate categories.

Any student enrolled in an accredited law school in the United States during 2011‐2012 is eligible to submit an entry in the law student category. The winning entries in each category for each of the three themes will be announced at the Symposium. All entries that the judges deem worthy of publication will be published in a special issue of the Seattle Environmental Law Journal dedicated to the proceedings of the Symposium. Entries must be submitted by email to wls.writing.competition@gmail.com by 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Saving Time on March 23, 2012.

Papers must not exceed 5,000 words in length (a maximum of approximately 20 pages), double‐spaced, 12‐point font using Bluebook law review citation format. Each page must have a header including the title of the paper and a page number. For anonymous evaluation of the entries, no information that could identify the author should appear anywhere in the body of the paper, including in the header. Each entry must have a separate cover sheet (not included in the 5,000 word limit) that includes the following contact information: (1) name; (2) address; (3) phone number; (4) email address; (5) law school (for law students and law faculty members); and (6) paper title. Any relevant article or essay may be submitted for the competition, including writing submitted for academic credit. Papers that have been previously published are not eligible for the competition. A paper must be the original work of the individual submitting the entry.

Judging: Papers will be subject to a blind review process; the panel of judges will judge the papers anonymously, without knowledge of the author’s name or law school. Papers will be evaluated by the following criteria: (1) originality and thoughtfulness; (2) writing quality; (3) analysis and legal reasoning; (4) quality and use of research (including interdisciplinary and applied examples); and (5) compliance with the competition rules.

Winning entries will be announced at the Sustainability and the Law Symposium at Seattle University on April 20, 2012.