Husain Family Legal Essay Competition

The Liberal Arts Honors Program is happy to announce the Husain Family Legal Essay Competition.  To enter the competition, please write and submit an essay that responds to the prompt listed below.

Eligibility: Current Liberal Arts Honors Scholars

Specifications: 750 – 1,000 words, double-spaced with name, EID, and essay title. 

Awards:

1st Prize: $1,000

2nd Prize: $500

3rd Prize: $250

Submission Deadline: Submit your essay to this address by Monday, March 10th, 2025, at midnight.

Send a pdf or doc of your essay to Husain_.7h0548w9yomv18dz@u.box.com.  Any text in the body of the email will not come through. Please be sure to include your name and EID in the title of file and at the top of your essay.

Prompt:

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Rights:

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This is commonly known as substantive due process—i.e., the rights of people that are not listed in the Constitution but which the Supreme Court has recognized as essential to daily life. Over time, the Supreme Court has identified new rights—e.g., the right to privacy, the right to interracial marriage, and the right to contract for one's own labor—as having Constitutional protection. The right to an abortion (as a matter of privacy) was recently removed from this list, in Dobbs v. Jackson, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). But what limits or lack of limits exist on the Supreme Court to categorize or un-categorize rights as substantive due process are not clear. What should the criteria be to identify new rights or to remove rights from Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections?