Call for Applications: Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellowship

FIRE is pleased to announce a call for applications for our Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellowship.

FIRE’s Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellowship was established in 2007 in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, whose commitment to freedom of expression and freedom of conscience serves as a sterling example to FIRE. As Justice Jackson wrote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943), “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

FIRE is seeking an energetic individual to serve as our next Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow. Working closely with FIRE’s Vice President of Legal and Public Advocacy in our Philadelphia headquarters for a two-year term, Jackson Fellows produce legal scholarship on issues central to FIRE’s mission.

More information about the Fellowship—including instructions on how to apply—is available on our Jobs page. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

Over the years, Jackson Fellows have published an impressive selection of legal scholarship.

Our inaugural Jackson Fellows, Azhar Majeed and Kelly Sarabyn of the University of Michigan Law School and Yale Law School, respectively, produced several pieces of original legal scholarship during their term as Fellows. Azhar, now FIRE’s Director of Policy Reform, published “The Misapplication of Peer Harassment Law on College and University Campuses and the Loss of Student Speech Rights” in the Journal of College and University Law, “Defying the Constitution: The Rise, Persistence, And Prevalence Of Campus Speech Codes” in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and “Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is” in the Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal. Kelly published “The Twenty-Sixth Amendment: Resolving the Federal Circuit Split Over College Students’ First Amendment Rights” in the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, “Free Speech at Private Universities” in the Journal of Law & Education, and “Prescribing Orthodoxy” in the Cardozo Public Law, Policy and Ethics Journal.

Erica Goldberg, a graduate of Stanford Law School and our next Jackson Fellow, was just as productive, publishing “Measuring A ‘Degree of Deference’: Institutional Academic Freedom In a Post-Grutter World,” an article she co-authored with Kelly, in the Santa Clara Law Review. Erica also published “Must Universities ‘Subsidize’ Controversial Ideas? Allocating Security Fees When Student Groups Host Divisive Speakers” in the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal and “Amending Christian Legal Society v. Martinez: Protecting Expressive Association as an Independent Right in a Limited Public Forum” in the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights.

Andrew Kloster of the New York University School of Law served as our most recent Jackson Fellow. Andrew’s “Student and Professorial Causes of Action Against Non-University Actors” was published in the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, and “The Violence Against Women Act and Double Jeopardy in Higher Education” was published by the Stanford Law Review Online.

We’re very happy to offer a recent law school graduate committed to FIRE’s mission of defending civil liberties on campus the opportunity to produce excellent legal scholarship, following the lead of Azhar, Kelly, Erica, and Andrew. We look forward to your applications.