Professor of Clinical Law Daniel Harawa has been selected by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) as the 2025 winner of the Junior Scholars Paper Competition Award for the Section on Criminal Law.
Harawa won the top prize in his section for his paper, “Complicating Racial Justice Narratives: The Peremptory Elimination Debate,” which raises the prospect of discrimination resulting from the legal right to remove potential jurors from trials without providing a reason.
Each year, the AALS honors legal scholars nationwide in 108 sections covering a range of disciplines. Harawa was recognized for outstanding academic achievement by a legal scholar who has taught for no more than six years. Last year, he was a runner-up in the same category.
The winners will be recognized during the AALS’s Annual Meeting, which will take place in San Francisco from January 7 to January 11.
Harawa, who is also director of the NYU Law Federal Appellate Clinic, is an award-winning teacher and legal scholar whose work focuses on race, civil rights and criminal justice issues. His scholarship has appeared in journals that include Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. Additionally, he has written for a variety of media outlets, including the Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. Prior to his time in academia, Harawa was assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and an appellate staff attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.
For Harawa, the AALS prize is a notable accomplishment. “Whether or not peremptory challenges [in jury selection] should be eliminated has been the subject of much scholarly debate,” he says. “But missing from the debate is often the perspective of those most marginalized—defendants. This paper attempts to remedy that. That the selection committee found my work worthy of recognition is both flattering and humbling.”
Posted January 7, 2025