Supino '06 Awarded Second Prize in Judicial Awareness Writing Competition

by Jaime Welch-Donahue | November 6, 2006

Christopher Supino JD ’06, a recent graduate of William & Mary Law School, was one of three winners of the Seventh Annual Program for Judicial Awareness Writing Competition. The annual competition for students is sponsored by the Pacific Legal Foundation as part of its effort to promote “the publication of works of legal scholarship that advance an understanding of key constitutional issues before the nation’s courts.”

Supino, who wrote and submitted his entry as a third-year law student, was awarded second place honors and a prize of $3,000 for his article, “The Police Power and ‘Public Use’: Balancing the Public Interest against Private Rights through Principled Constitutional Distinctions.” The article, which focuses on the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, is currently under review for publication. Looking back over 200 years of takings jurisprudence, Supino argues that the Supreme Court failed early in its history to define precisely the contours of the police power and public use clause and that this failure is a direct cause of the confusion that permeats takings jurisprudence in the modern era. He proposes an alternative takings framework and ‘test’ to restore coherence to eminent domain analysis.

Supino currently practices law in the bankruptcy and commercial litigation department of Kutak Rock LLP in Richmond. During law school, he served as a symposium editor and senior articles editor of the William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Cornell University and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

For more about the Pacific Legal Foundation, visit http://community.pacificlegal.org/Page.aspx?pid=183.