Call for Abstracts: Stanford International Junior Faculty Form (Stanford Law School), February 5, 2021 @

Call for Abstracts: Fourteenth International Junior Faculty Forum

Sponsored by Stanford Law School, the International Junior Faculty Forum (IJFF) was established to stimulate the exchange of ideas and research among younger legal scholars from around the world. We live today in a global community– in particular, a global legal community. The IJFF is designed to foster transnational legal scholarship that surmounts barriers of time, space, legal traditions and cultures, and to create an engaged global community of scholars. The Fourteenth IJFF will be held at Stanford Law School in fall 2021 (the exact date has not yet been fixed; but it will probably be in October).

In order to be considered for the 2021 International Junior Faculty Forum, authors must meet the following criteria:

Citizen of a country other than the United States
Current academic institution is outside of the United States
Not currently a student in the United States
Have held a faculty position or the equivalent, including positions comparable to junior faculty positions in research institutions, for less than seven years as of 2021; and
Last degree earned less than ten years before 2021.

Papers may be on any legally relevant subject and can make use of any relevant approach: they can be quantitative or qualitative, sociological, anthropological, historical, or economic. The host institution is committed to intellectual, methodological, and regional diversity, and welcomes papers from junior scholars from all parts of the world. Please note, however, that already published papers are not eligible for consideration. We particularly welcome work that is interdisciplinary.

Those who would like to participate in the IJFF must first submit an abstract of the proposed paper. Abstracts should be no more than two (2) pages long and must be in English. The abstract should provide a roadmap of your paper—it should tell us what you plan to do, lay out the major argument of the paper, say something about the methodology, and indicate the paper’s contribution to scholarship. The due date for abstracts is Friday, February 5, 2021, although earlier submissions are welcome. To submit your abstract, please complete our Abstract Submission Form. Abstracts must have the name of the author(s) and title of the abstract on the document that is submitted to be considered for the forum.

After the abstracts have been reviewed, we will invite, no later than the end of March 2021, a number of junior scholars to submit full papers of no more than 15,000 words, electronically, in English, by a deadline of approximately mid-May 2021. Please include a word count for final papers. There is no fixed number of papers to be invited, but in the past years, up to 50 invitations have been issued from among a much larger number of abstracts.

NOTE:  Because of the pandemic, the 2020 Forum was held virtually; participants took part through zoom.  At this point, it is not possible to predict the form of the 2021 forum; it is possible that it will be conducted remotely, with presenters and commentators connecting from their home institutions and countries; but it may also be possible, by October 2021, to have the forum at least partially an in-person affair.

An international committee of legal scholars will review the papers and select a small number of them, but at least seven, for full presentation at the conference, where two senior scholars will comment on each paper. After the remarks of the commentators, all of the participants, junior and senior alike, will have a chance to join in the discussion. One of the most valuable—and enjoyable—aspects of the Forum, in the opinion of many participants, has been the chance to meet junior and senior scholars and to talk about your work and theirs.

Participants are encouraged to seek funding from their home institutions. In default, Stanford will cover expenses of travel, including airfare, lodging, and food for participants. Questions about the forum should be directed to [email protected].

Professor Lawrence M. Friedman
Stanford Law School

Professor Deborah Hensler
Stanford Law School