For Immediate Release
June 17, 2008
updated June 23, 2008


Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9500

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Susannah Foster, Georgetown Law Class of 2008, has won a 2008 Burton Award for Legal Achievement. She was selected for her paper, When Clarity Means Ambiguity: An Examination of Statutory Interpretation at the Environmental Protection Agency. Foster and other winners from law schools around the country received their awards at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on June 16.

Foster is the fifth recipient from Georgetown Law to receive a Burton Award. Past recipients include: Jessica Powley Hayden, Georgetown Law Class of 2007, for Mullahs On a Bus: The Establishment Clause and U.S. Foreign Aid; Stephen Lessard, Georgetown Law Class of 2007, for Playing the Economic Substance Trump Card: Black & Decker v. United States; Carrolle Kim, Georgetown Law Class of 2005, for Failing the Spirit of ERISA: Knolling v. American Power Conversion Corp.; and Mary Calkins, Georgetown Law Class of 2001, for They Shoot Trojan Horses, Don't They? An Economic Analysis of Anti-Hacking Regulatory Models.

The awards were created by the Burton Foundation in 1999 to reward effective legal writing and honor attorneys and law students who use "plain, clear and concise language and avoid archaic, stilted legalese."

The foundation was established by William C. Burton, a partner in the international law firm of D’Amato & Lynch, author of Burton’s Legal Thesaurus and an advocate of plain language and modernized legal writing. The award program is run in association with the Library of Congress Law Library.

Foster received her J.D. summa cum laude from Georgetown Law in May 2008 and was a winner of the Frances E. Lucey, S.J. Award, presented in 2008 to the three summa cum laude graduates. At the Law Center, she served as a notes editor for the Georgetown Law Journal, co-president of the Environmental Law Society and a board member of the Equal Justice Foundation. She plans to clerk for Judge Henry Kennedy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

 

About Georgetown University Law Center 

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It has the largest full-time faculty in the nation and is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.

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