The 2024 writing competition is now open. This year’s topic is Emerging Biotechnologies and Their Relationships to Personal Freedoms.

Biotechnology has played an evermore increasing part in our lives, from the biometric data collected in our smartwatch to the vaccine we took during the pandemic. But as these innovations can be utilized to solve global health crises, find early signs of disease, or even alert authorities to urgent health issues, they can also intersect with the rights of privacy, speech, and reproduction. Consider how some women, with the overturning of Roe, worried that their private data would be used to target those who sought abortions. Or consider how doctors in many states are barred from recommending certain treatments to those in the LGBTQ+ community–medical advances and the law are invariably intertwined.

This year’s writing competition invites submissions on Emerging Biotechnologies and Their Relationships to Personal Freedoms. For purposes of determining what topics fall within the scope of this writing competition, the terms “biotechnologies,” “personal,” and “freedoms” should be broadly construed, and in no way limited to the examples given above.

Example topics could include, but are by no means limited to: using artificial intelligence to diagnose; the use of femtech and the privacy concerns surrounding it; biotechnology and informed consent; social justice and allowing everyone access to biotech innovation; emerging reproductive technology and their relation to Dobbs; and biotech uses in the field of national security concerns.

Students are invited to submit papers that provide analysis or insights derived from or related to these questions, that examine proposed or newly-enacted laws related to the questions, or that propose novel legal structures to engage with current acts.

Papers will be judged by a fully-blind panel of judges. The author(s) of the first place paper will be awarded $2,000; the author(s) of the second place paper will be awarded $500.

Submission requirements

Please submit papers via email to techinstitute@law.georgetown.edu. Submissions are due on June 3, 2024.

Papers will be accepted from students enrolled at any ABA-accredited law school in the United States during the 2024-2025 academic year. The paper must be the author’s own work, although students may incorporate feedback received as part of an academic course or supervised writing project. The paper must not have been published or committed for publication in another journal; the Georgetown Law Technology Review must have the first right of publication for any winning essay. Publication of winning papers in the Georgetown Law Technology Review is not guaranteed, and is up to the discretion of the editorial board.

Papers will be evaluated based on thoroughness of research and analysis, relevance to the competition topic, relevance to current legal and/or public policy debates, originality of thought, and clarity of expression.

Papers should be 3000-5000 words long (not including footnotes) and be submitted in Times New Roman size 12 font, single spaced. Footnotes must conform to the 20th edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Papers must be in English.