Hoover Institution: Research Fellowship for Free Speech Law
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is seeking an outstanding early-career legal scholar who is interested in doing research on free speech law, in preparation for seeking an academic position at a law school or elsewhere.
The selected candidate will work on his/her own research with the guidance and supervision of Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh, who is coming to Hoover after 30 years as a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. The fellow will be appointed a Research Fellow with the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI), for one year from July 2024 through June 2025; the term may be renewed, if both the fellow and Hoover agree, for one extra year. The fellow will be expected to be physically present at the Institution, and working at it full-time, with no competing major professional commitments.
There is no teaching obligation, so the successful candidate will have maximum time to research and write. He or she would, however, be expected to help organize and participate in occasional conferences, workshops, and lectures, and to work on occasional projects with Volokh or other Senior Fellows. These tasks would all be related to free speech law, and are expected to help promote the fellow’s own research and future career.
Qualifications
- You must have a JD or its equivalent by June 2024.
- You must commit to staying for at least one year (July 2024 through June 2025). The date range might be moved back a little if required because of a judicial clerkship that will keep you occupied until July to September 2024.
- We prefer if you have clerked for a judge or judges, or have a clerkship lined up for July 2025 or later.
- Work experience as a lawyer is not required, though some such experience is a plus.
- A PhD in another discipline is not required, though neither is it frowned on.
- You must have written a publishable law journal article already while in law school or shortly after. Whether it has already been published or not does not matter, so long as it is essentially complete. That article need not have been on free speech law.
- You must be planning to work on free speech law, though understood capaciously. This is not limited to First Amendment law, but includes federal or state statutes, common law rules, state constitutional provisions, transnational or international legal provisions, and rules of important private institutions—so long as they relate to the regulation (or deregulation) of speech, press, expression, assembly, expressive association, petition, and the like. Likewise, it includes doctrinal, historical, theoretical, and empirical scholarship.
- We prefer projects on important but insufficiently studied topics, rather than on ones that have already been heavily researched by others.
Application instructions
To apply, submit the following at https://applyfsl.hoover.org:
- a resume;
- a law school transcript;
- plans for at least two research projects, described in some detail; draft Introductions for what would become journal articles tend to be a good format;
- at least one published or completed and publishable research article;
- any other articles, whether published or in draft;
- and contact information for three professors or other legal scholars who can speak to your intellect, writing, or research agenda.
Please direct questions to Thomas J. Schnaubelt at thomas.schnaubelt@stanford.edu
Click here to learn more and to apply >>
The application deadline is January 8, 2024.
From the organization
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace is a public policy research center devoted to the advanced study of economics, politics, history, political economy, and law—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs. It is located on the Stanford University campus, and is an academic unit of the University.
Learn more about the Hoover Institution >>
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