The Federalist Society has announced a new Searle Young Legal Scholars Research Fellowship Program to provide two junior tenure-track faculty members funding to take a semester-long research leave to make major progress on an important scholarly article:

• The Award: Fellows will receive a stipend set at a level reasonably comparable to their salary for half of a year. The stipend will be sufficient to enable fellows to take negotiated leaves from teaching duties in order to devote themselves full time to production of a significant piece of legal scholarship. In addition, fellows will receive advice and feedback on their project from a member of the Fellowship Selection Committee. The leave should begin no later than the middle of the 2009-2010 academic year. The program assumes that fellows will continue to use the offices and research facilities of their home institutions.
• Selection Criteria: To qualify, an applicant must be a tenure-track faculty member at a law school. Special consideration will be given to applicants in the second to fifth years of their teaching careers. The Fellowship Selection Committee will consider the following criteria:
  • Prior demonstration of outstanding academic talent
  • Promise and importance of proposed scholarly article
  • Demonstrated commitment to intellectual diversity in the legal academy
  • Current teaching load (and, thus, likely utility of a fellowship)
• Selection Process: A distinguished group of academics will select the Fellows.
• To Apply: Applicants should submit:
  • A description of the project for which the applicant seeks the fellowship, including its current status
  • A list and copies of completed or close-to-complete articles (published or not), with a notation indicating the single non-coauthored article that represents the applicant’s best work
  • A curriculum vitae
  • Preliminary information concerning the applicant’s school’s policies on granting academic leave for the pursuit of research funded by an outside entity, including any minimum financial commitment generally required in those circumstances
  • In addition, though not required, applicants may submit the following:
    • Two to three letters of recommendation from faculty members or other academic authorities familiar with the applicant’s work
    • Any information relevant to the applicant’s qualifications under the selection criteria listed above
  • All application materials should be submitted to: Searle Junior Scholar Fellowship Selection Committee c/o The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies 1015 18th Street, N.W. Suite 425 Washington, DC 20036 Or by email to Erin Sheley, Deputy Faculty Division Director.
• Application Deadline: All application materials should be submitted by September 15, 2008.
• Announcement of Fellowships: Applicants will be notified no later than November 17, 2008.