For our Fourth Annual Article I Initiative Writing Contest, we posed the following questions to young thinkers around the country: Has the judiciary usurped too much of Congress’s legislative power? If so, how can Congress show greater ambition for their own institution and work against these trends? What innovations can the legislative branch create to claw back its legislative prerogative?

We were pleased to receive many thoughtful and well-argued essay submissions, which were evaluated by our all-star panel of judges featuring Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, Professor Lillian BeVier, and the Honorable Christopher DeMuth. We are grateful to all who submitted an entry and are pleased to recognize this year’s winners for their excellent work!

First Place:

For his entry titled Negative Legislation, our judges selected Roberto Borgert as the winner of this year’s contest. His first-place essay has been published in the Federalist Society Review and can be found here.

Roberto is a 2018 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.  This fall, he will be joining the Washington, D.C., office of Latham & Watkins LLP as an associate.

Second Place:

Our second-place prize went to Adrian Aliu for his essay First Among Equals: Reworking the Relationship Between Congress and the Supreme Court.

Just 20 years old, Adrian is a third-year urban planning student at the University of Waterloo. Adrian has a broad interest in questions of law and public policy, with a particular focus on democratic and constitutional reform.

Third Place:

Coming in third place was Alex MacDonald for his entry Contextual Textualism: How Legislative History Can Restrain Judges, Revitalize Congress, and Restore the Conservative Legal Movement.

Alex is an employment counsel at Instacart. He previously practiced employment and labor law in the Washington, D.C. offices of Littler Mendelson, and is a 2012 graduate of William and Mary School of Law.