The Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition was established by AEF in 2005 to honor the late Congressman Robert T. Matsui and his many accomplishments. Through this writing competition, AEF seeks to encourage legal scholarship on issues of importance to the Asian Pacific American community.
The competition is open to all law students nationwide in the United States. Submissions for the 2018 competition must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST July 1, 2018. The winner will be announced on or around August 15, 2018. Submissions must be original works and not previously published. Submissions should address a legal topic of importance to the Asian Pacific American community. The winner will receive a monetary award of six thousand dollars ($6,000), and the winning entry will be published by the UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal (APALJ), subject to APALJ’s standard editorial process and copyright policy. APALJ’s editorial process may require additional substantive edits prior to publication.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Hastings College of Law, Congressman Matsui was first elected to the United States Congress in 1978 from Sacramento, California. He won re-election to Congress 13 times. Congressman Matsui was a strong supporter of AEF, serving as the keynote speaker for the AEF’s Annual Benefit Dinner in 1997 and again in 2003.
A number of prominent scholars, practitioners, and jurists nationwide have served on the competition’s Board of Advisors, including Justice Ming W. Chin of the Supreme Court of California; Judge Ronald S.W. Lew of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; Judge Florence Pan of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia; Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and co-founder of the AEF Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition; Paul M. Igasaki, Chair and Chief Judge of the Administrative Review Board, Department of Labor; Debra Wong Yang, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and former U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California; Viet D. Dinh, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy; Vincent A. Eng, founding partner of the VENG Group; Professor Jerry Kang of the UCLA School of Law; Judge Jennnifer Choe-Groves of the the U.S. Court of International Trade and co-founder of the AEF Robert T. Matsui Annual Writing Competition; Sujit M. Raman, Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States and past president of AEF; and Michael P. Chu and John C. Yang, past presidents of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
For the application for the 2018 Competition, please click the 2018 Matsui Application. The deadline to apply is July 1, 2018, 11:59 p.m. EST. More information may be found in the 2018 Matsui Flyer. Recent winners include:
- Christopher Chou, Land Use and the Chinatown Problem (2013)
- Kia Xiong, Missing the Hmong: A Need for More from Asian American Legal Studies (2012)
- Bryan Ikegami, An Urgent Opportunity: Unifying the Asian American Stance on Affirmative Action(2011)
- Andrea Yang, Progressive Lawyering: Theory and Practice in Asian Immigrant Communities (2010)
- Di Zhang, Intercountry Adoption: Better Viewed in Black and White or Technicolor (2009).