Student Scholarship Award
Each year, our organization presents AALA Scholarship Awards, which are intended to recognize and encourage scholarly work. This includes a category for Student Scholarship.
Criteria
A student is defined as someone who is or was enrolled part-time or full-time in an ABA-accredited law school or graduate program relating to agricultural law at the time the work was authored. Membership in AALA is not required.
Any student scholarly work (paper, article, comment, etc.) relating to agricultural law that has been published or accepted for publication in the year prior to the nomination deadline is eligible for consideration.
In selecting student winners, the AALA Awards Committee considers the excellence in quality of writing, the relevance to important legal issues in agriculture, the clarity of analysis, and the potential effects on agricultural law studies.
The use of all generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create any portion of a paper submitted for this award is prohibited, whether in the writing or editing phase. Submissions must be the original work product of the student. AALA reserves the right to screen papers using AI detection software.
Nominations
Nominations open July 31. Forms and submission instructions will be posted here at that time. For reference, the 2025 nomination form is available here.
The award winner will be announced and presented with a plaque on November 7 at the 2026 Annual Educational Symposium in Dallas, TX, and subsequently announced via an AALA publication and press release.
Please use this Nomination Form and email it along with any relevant information to info@aglaw-assn.org with the name of the award in the subject line. The deadline is September 18, 2026. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged.
Required Submission Information:
- Name, phone number, and email address of the author
- Attachment (PDF or Word) or link to submission
- There is no length requirement or limitation
Past Recipients
| 2025
Beyond the Bacon: Proposition 12’s Impact on the United States Pork Industry, forthcoming 2026. Brooke De Noble, Drake University Law School
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| 2024
Chance Mitchell, University of New Mexico School of Law
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| 2023
Counting the Cost of California’s Proposition 12 Post-Ross, 69 S.D. L. REV. (forthcoming 2024). Taylor Bushelle, University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law
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| 2022
Saving the Little Guy: Estate and Inheritance Taxation on Generational Farmers and Ranchers, 13 ESTATE PLANNING JOURNAL 1 (2021). Sarah Patterson, Texas Tech University School of Law
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| 2021
Bethany Sumpter, Texas A&M University School of Law
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| 2019
Kyle K. Weldon, Texas A&M University School of Law
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| 2018
Nicholas J. Kromka, Seton Hall University School of Law
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| 2017
Kathryn Campo-Bowen, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
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| 2016
Neal Rasmussen, University of Minnesota Law School
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| 2015
Unapproved Genetically Modified Corn: It’s What’s For Dinner, 100 IOWA L. REV. 825 (2015). Kyndra Lundquist, The University of Iowa College of Law
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| 2015
Jacob Strobel, Drake University Law School
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