Kindregan Scholarship Award Criteria

Determination Process

The Award shall be granted by the Dean, in the Dean’s discretion upon receiving the advice of the Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and the Director of Faculty Scholarship and Research (collectively, the “Award Committee”). The Dean shall make available to the faculty a short summary of reasons for selecting each award recipient. Nominations, including self-nominations, are welcomed by the Award Committee by March 1st of each year, but are not required for a faculty member to be considered for the Award.

Eligibility Criteria

The Award may be granted to any full-time resident faculty member. However, any faculty member receiving the award shall not be considered as a recipient for three years thereafter. 

Eligible legal scholarship that may be considered by the Award Committee includes articles published in law reviews, law journals, peer-reviewed scholarly journals; scholarly books or monographs; and other scholarly works of similar scope that seek to advance knowledge or provide new insights into the candidate’s field. To be considered in connection with the Award, eligible legal scholarship must have been published (or been accepted for publication) in the previous 3 years, and must have been listed in one of the relevant faculty member’s Annual Reports to the Dean. 

Assessment Criteria

Recipients of the Award will have demonstrated substantial and ongoing scholarly contributions to their fields. When selecting a recipient, the Award Committee will consider the number and quality of individual pieces of the recipient’s eligible legal scholarship using the following criteria: (i) clarity of expression and organization; (ii) analytical rigor and cogency; (iii) thoroughness of research; (iv) scope and depth of the work; (v) originality of argument, synthesis, and ideas; (vi) importance of the topic of inquiry for the candidate’s field, in the courts, or in legal reform; and (vii) impact, whether measured or reasonably anticipated, of the work in the candidate’s field. The Award Committee may also consider the placement of publications (e.g., the reputation of the law journals or book publishers), recognition of the recipient’s scholarship in the form of citations, research database downloads, external awards, invitations to scholarly conferences, diversity of scholarly work (i.e., writing that covers different subjects within the scholar’s field), press coverage, or other substantial public recognition.