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Vanderbilt Law Review

Essays category.

The Missing “T” in ESG

Apr. 20, 2024— Danielle A. Chaim & Gideon Parchomovsky | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 789 Environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) philosophy is the zeitgeist of our time. The rise of ESG investments came against the perceived failure of the government to adequately promote socially important goals. And so, corporations are now being praised and credited for stepping up...

An Evolving Landscape: Name, Image, and Likeness Rights in High School Athletics

Apr. 20, 2024— Epstein, Grow, & Kisska-Schulze | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 845 Amateur sports have entered a changing landscape. The onset of Name, Image, and Likeness (“NIL”) opportunities at the college level has prompted over half of state high school athletic associations to likewise permit high school student-athletes to pursue similar financial opportunities. The purpose of this...

The Minimalist Alternative to Abolitionism: Focusing on the Non-Dangerous Many

Mar. 20, 2024— Christopher Slobogin | 77 Vand. L. Rev. 531 In The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics, published in the Harvard Law Review, Thomas Frampton proffers four reasons why those who want to abolish prisons should not budge from their position even for offenders who are considered dangerous. This Essay demonstrates why a...

Against Political Theory in Constitutional Interpretation

Apr. 26, 2023— Christopher S. Havasy, Joshua C. Macey & Brian Richardson | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 899 Judges and academics have long relied on the work of a small number of Enlightenment political theorists—particularly Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone—to discern meaning from vague and ambiguous constitutional provisions. This Essay cautions that Enlightenment political theory should rarely, if ever,...

Unenforceable Waivers

Mar. 28, 2023— Edward K. Cheng, Ehud Guttel & Yuval Procaccia | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 571 Textbook tort law establishes that waivers of liability—especially those involving physical harm—are often unenforceable. This Essay demonstrates through an extensive survey of the case law that despite being unenforceable, such waivers remain in widespread use. Indeed, defendants frequently use waivers even...

Rationing Access

Jan. 27, 2023— Roy Baharad & Gideon Parchomovsky | 76 Vand. L. Rev. 215 Protection of common natural resources is one of the foremost challenges facing our society. Since Garrett Hardin published his immensely influential The Tragedy of the Commons, theorists have contemplated the best way to save common-pool resources—national parks, fisheries, heritage sites, and fragile ecosystems—from overuse...

Paid Sick Leave’s Payoff

Nov. 22, 2022— Jennifer Bennett Shinall | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1879 Perhaps paid sick days have never been more valuable than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet even before COVID-19, seventeen states and the District of Columbia began passing legislative mandates that employers provide employees with paid sick leave (“PSL”) days. Most of this legislation requires employers to...

Policing the Police: Personnel Management and Police Misconduct

Oct. 20, 2022— Max Schanzenbach | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1523 Police misconduct is at the top of the public policy agenda, but there is surprisingly little understanding of how police personnel management policies affect police misconduct. Police-civilian interactions in large jurisdictions are, in principle at least, highly regulated. But these regulations are at least partially counteracted by...

Preliminary Damages

Jan. 24, 2022— Gideon Parchomovsky & Alex Stein | 75 Vand. L. Rev. 239 (2022) | Historically, the law helped impecunious plaintiffs overcome their inherent disadvantage in civil litigation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case: modern law has largely abandoned the mission of assisting the least well-off. In this Essay, we propose a new remedy that can dramatically...

Brown , Massive Resistance, and the Lawyer’s View: A Nashville Story

Oct. 19, 2021— Daniel J. Sharfstein | 74 Vand. L. Rev. 1435 (2021) | For nearly 75 years, the Vanderbilt Law Review has sought to publish rigorous, intellectually honest scholarship. In publishing the following Essay, we seek to provide an equally unflinching look at one way in which Vanderbilt Law School and its graduates have participated in the creation...

The Quick (Spending) and the Dead: The Agency Costs of Forever Philanthropy

Apr. 20, 2021— Brian Galle | 74 Vand. L. Rev. 757 (2021) | American philanthropic institutions control upwards of a trillion dollars of wealth. Because contributions to these entities are deductible from both income and estate taxes, and the entities’ earnings are tax-free, that trillion dollars is heavily underwritten by contemporary taxpayers. Law offers little assurance that those...

Chevron Is a Phoenix

Mar. 24, 2021— Lisa Schultz Bressman & Kevin M. Stack | 74 Vand. L. Rev. 465 (2021) | Judicial deference to agency interpretations of their own statutes is a foundational principle of the administrative state. It recognizes that Congress has the need and desire to delegate the details of regulatory policy to agencies rather than specify those details...

The Liberal Case Against the Modern Class Action

May. 26, 2020— Martin H. Redish | 73 Vand. L. Rev. 1127 (2020) | Those who classify themselves as liberal generally favor widespread use of class actions as a means of policing corporate misbehavior and protecting the individual worker or consumer against capitalist excesses. In this Essay, however, I take the counterintuitive position that while class action practice...

Why Class Actions Are Something both Liberals and Conservatives Can Love

May. 26, 2020— Brian T. Fitzpatrick | 73 Vand. L. Rev. 1147 (2020) | In Professor Redish’s review of my new book, The Conservative Case for Class Actions, he argues that liberals should oppose the class action because the cy pres doctrine used to distribute settlement money is democratically illegitimate and that conservatives should oppose it because it...

Social Checks and Balances: A Private Fairness Doctrine

Apr. 20, 2020— Michael P. Vandenbergh | 73 Vand. L. Rev. 811 | This Essay proposes a private standards and certification system to induce media firms to provide more complete and accurate information. It argues that this new private governance system is a viable response to the channelized flow of information that is exacerbating political polarization in the...

Golden Parachutes and the Limits of Shareholder Voting

Jan. 21, 2020— Albert H. Choi, Andrew C.W. Lund & Robert Schonlau | 73 Vand. L. Rev. 223 (2020) | With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, Congress attempted to constrain change-in-control payments (also known as “golden parachutes”) by giving shareholders the right to approve or disapprove such payments on...

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Extracurriculars.

A Strong Vanderbilt Essay Example from an Accepted Student

Consistently ranked as one of the best schools in the nation, Vanderbilt University is world-renowned for exceptional academics. A top-tier reputation leads to a highly selective admissions process, so to get into Vanderbilt, you need more than just strong grades and test scores—you need stellar essays that set you apart from other academically excellent applicants.

In this post, we will share a real essay submitted by an accepted Vanderbilt student. We will go over what this essay did well, and where there is room for improvement.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Read our Vanderbilt essay breakdown to get a comprehensive overview of this year’s supplemental prompts.

Essay Example – The Power of Story

At an intersection in Oakwood, an elderly Asian man walks on the sidewalk. Behind him, a man in a black hoodie follows. Without warning, the man in the black hoodie pushes the Asian man to the ground, his face landing flat against the sidewalk, motionless.

Pausing the video, I watch my friends’ faces flicker between confusion, anger, and hurt. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes became personally painful for my Asian American friends. We encountered news of elderly Asian Americans violently thrashed and berated with slurs. But beyond our circle, conversations about these occurrences were absent. And despite the South Asian community being relatively safe from these crimes, I shared the sobs of my friends. 

A few years ago, I joined a nonprofit that empowers minorities to be civically engaged citizens. Engaging with this group of passionate individuals, I was inspired by their unrelenting dedication to improving others’ lives through community-building.

Eager to foster solidarity among Reno’s AAPI community in light of these tragedies, we pioneered a march against hate, where we invited student speakers to share their stories of racial discrimination. Listening to my peers’ journeys, from finding confidence as an immigrant to navigating implicit bias in the classroom, I became captivated by the power of story. 

Bonding over the commonality in our journeys and in our activism, I yearn to persist in championing the use of dialogue to build community in the face of adversity at Vanderbilt.

What the Essay Did Well

This “Extracurricular Essay” does a great job of telling a story. The beginning draws the reader in by including details like “ an intersection in Oakwood ,” and “ a man in a black hoodie ,” to help us visualize the scene. In the next paragraph, we realize that we are watching this situation through the eyes of the student. By first providing readers with the terrible situation directly, the student arouses our own emotions, which allows us to immediately understand the student’s shock and anger once we realize we are actually in their shoes.

The second paragraph goes on to provide good background on the student’s personal connection to the situation, which allows readers to understand their motivation for engaging in the extracurriculars described in the third and fourth paragraphs. By showing us the pain their friends felt (“ I watch my friends’ faces flicker between confusion, anger, and hurt ”) and explaining that this issue was at the forefront of their mind, but ignored  by many others (“ But beyond our circle, conversations about these occurrences were absent ”), we get a tangible sense of the student’s connection to the issue.

Then, the essay shifts to discussing the student’s extracurricular activity. The point of this kind of essay is to help admissions officers see that you are involved in your activities to grow and learn  about the world, rather than pad your resume. Because the student took the time to explain their passion for AAPI activism and demonstrate their compassion for others in the previous paragraph, we can clearly see that this nonprofit is genuinely meaningful to them.

Finally, although this essay just asks about an extracurricular, this student was still able to infuse elements of their personality into the essay in the way they told it. From the details included, we know this student is compassionate, an activist, and values justice and diversity. Being able to show the reader all that without telling us these aspects of their personality outright makes for an engaging, informative essay.

What Could Be Improved

The biggest thing this essay needs to improve is the shift in focus from the cultural context of the first two paragraphs to the student’s involvement in the extracurricular itself. Right now, that transition is rather abrupt, so although the topics are related, the reader is left to tie them together on their own.

For example, while the detail in the introduction describing the instance of hate is captivating, in such a short essay, that space could be used much more wisely. A better hook would immediately place the reader in the extracurricular activity, possibly like this:

“ STOP ASIAN HATE. PROTECT ASIAN LIVES. I AM NOT INVISIBLE. Hundreds of cardboard signs blocked out the strong Reno sun, the feeling of change hanging in the air. My throat sore and mouth parched after hours of chanting, I couldn’t help but smile knowing that we made this march possible. ”

With this introduction placing the reader in the middle of the action (a technique called “in medias res”), the rest of the essay could then be spent providing more details about what the student did as a part of the nonprofit. They tell us they “ pioneered a march against hate, where we invited student speakers to share their stories of racial discrimination,” but a stronger extracurricular essay would delve into the specific role the student played in planning these events.

Similarly, rather than ending the third paragraph by just telling the reader that they became “ captivated by the power of story ” through listening to others, this student could have demonstrated how that power tangibly affected their own actions, by adding a sentence along the lines of: 

“ Inspired by the stories I had heard, I encouraged my friends to submit their own stories as opinion pieces to our school newspaper, while I created flyers for the march that included photos of myself as a child, to humanize our movement .” Notice how this version both shows us what the student did and provides more insight into their character.

With a word count this low, you need to understand exactly what the prompt is asking for, and make sure everything you say is helping provide that. Background context is important, but if the prompt is asking about your extracurriculars, most of the essay should be dedicated to your actual involvement in the extracurricular.

Where to Get Feedback on Your Essay

Do you want feedback on your Vanderbilt essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Personal Essay and Short Answer Prompts

Personal essay prompts.

To help us get to know you in the application review process, you are required to submit a personal essay. For insight and advice about how to approach writing your personal essay, see our Expert Advice page. 

• Common Application first-year essay prompts
• Common App transfer essay prompt: Please provide a personal essay that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.
• Coalition, powered by Scoir first-year and transfer essay prompts

Short Answer Question

For both first-year and transfer applicants, we ask you to complete a short answer essay (approximately 250 words) based on one of two prompts. 

• Vanderbilt University values learning through contrasting points of view. We understand that our differences, and our respect for alternative views and voices, are our greatest source of strength. Please reflect on conversations you’ve had with people who have expressed viewpoints different from your own. How did these conversations/experiences influence you?
• Vanderbilt offers a community where students find balance between their academic and social experiences. Please briefly elaborate on how one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences has influenced you.

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Vanderbilt Video Essay

I applied RD to Vanderbilt and just realized that there is a video essay option on the applicant status portal. Would it hurt my application if I didn't complete this? I find it confusing that the video essay isn't mentioned in the RD application, yet just appears on the portal. Any advice appreciated.

Alternate video player not working Hi, Used both firefox and chrome and same issue on both. The alternate video player works for the first time I open the page, but if I click …

are you sure this is required for regular admissions? i was under the impression that vandy required the video essay submission only for their early decision applicants: https://law.vanderbilt.edu/prospective-students/admissions/binding-early-decision.php

maybe they only had that space open because early decision applicants use the same portal. if it is not required, it won't hurt your app for not doing it.

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Vanderbilt Law Review

Submissions.

The Vanderbilt Law Review publishes six times a year (January, March, April, May, October, and November). We have two selection cycles (spring and fall) per year. During a selection cycle, we accept submissions on a rolling basis. We do not accept submissions solely authored by law school students.

Please follow the link immediately below to visit our Scholastica page . The Scholastica page contains the most up to date information about submission windows.

How to Submit

All submissions should include the manuscript (with an abstract), a cover letter, and your CV or resume. We prefer that you submit the manuscript in Microsoft Word format; the cover letter and CV/resume may be submitted as a Word, PDF, or similar file.

We strongly prefer electronic submission through Scholastica. If an email submission is necessary, please send submission materials to [email protected] . If a hard copy submission is absolutely necessary (i.e., neither Scholastica or email is available), please mail your materials to:

Senior Articles Editor Vanderbilt Law Review 131 21st Avenue South Nashville, TN 37203.

Length of Submission

We accept both articles and essays for publication. For articles, we strongly prefer submissions 20,000–35,000 words, including text and footnotes (40–70 journal pages). Essays are typically under 20,000 words, including text and footnotes. For submissions that exceed these guidelines, length will be a factor that may weigh against extending an offer to publish.

In all but the most exceptional circumstances, we publish book reviews and article responses in our online companion, Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc . Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc considers essays, article responses, and book reviews throughout the year. Please see the En Banc page for more details.

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We prefer submissions in the format of a Microsoft Word document. Please use footnotes rather than endnotes. All footnotes should conform to the current edition of The Bluebook.

The Vanderbilt Law Review edits pieces for compliance with the following sources: the Chicago Manual of Style (grammar and style), the Bluebook (citations), Webster’s Third Unabridged Dictionary (hyphenation and spelling), and the Vanderbilt Law Review Style Guide (available upon request).

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The Vanderbilt Law Review values theoretical and empirical contributions to the legal literature. We also value transparency and reproducibility in these articles. For articles that have mathematical proofs, please include these proofs in an appendix to the article. For empirical articles, any procedures, methodology, or robustness checks not included in the body of the article must be included in an appendix to the article. Please have the dataset ready to be sent upon request.

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Upon receiving an offer of publication from another law review, you may request an expedited review of your article. If you have submitted your article via Scholastica, we strongly prefer that you request expedited review through Scholastica. If you have submitted your article via email or mail, you may request expedited review by sending an email to [email protected] . The email must include the author’s name, the title of the submission, the law review that has made the offer, and the deadline (date and time) that the offeror has given for the reply. Please do not send an email if you have already submitted the expedite via Scholastica.

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Please let us know if you have decided to withdraw your piece from submission. If you have submitted your article via Scholastica, we strongly prefer that you withdraw the submission through Scholastica. If you have submitted your article via email or mail, you may withdraw the piece by sending an email to [email protected] . The email must include the author’s name and the title of the submission.

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Please address any additional questions to the Senior Articles Editor at  [email protected] .

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At Columbia, the Protests Continued, With Dancing and Pizza

Will more stringent tactics subdue protests? Or fuel them?

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By Vimal Patel ,  Chelsia Rose Marcius and Karla Marie Sanford

The new tents popped up — one, two, three — on Columbia’s campus. It was a defiant gesture on Thursday afternoon by student activists, who were furious about the university’s decision to call in the police to clear an encampment used to protest the Israel-Hamas war.

If university officials thought that getting rid of the encampment, or arresting more than 100 protesters, would persuade students to give up, they may have been very wrong.

By Thursday night, the tents had disappeared. But scores of students took over a campus lawn. Planning to stay all night, they were in a rather upbeat mood, noshing on donated pizza and snacks. An impromptu dance party had even broken out.

“The police presence and the arrests do not deter us in any way,” said Layla Saliba, 24, a Palestinian-American student at the School of Social Work, at a news conference organized by Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups.

“If anything,” she added, “all of their repression towards us — it’s galvanized us. It’s moved us.”

At a moment when some campuses are aflame with student activism over the Palestinian cause — the kind that has disrupted award ceremonies, student dinners and classes — college administrators are dealing with the questions that Columbia considered this week: Will more stringent tactics quell protests? Or fuel them?

The decision by Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, to bring in law enforcement came a day after a remarkable congressional hearing in which she said that the university’s leaders now agreed that certain contested phrases — like “from the river to the sea” — might warrant discipline.

She was widely criticized by academic freedom experts for failing to stand up to lawmakers who wanted her to trample on academic freedom and free expression.

On Thursday, Ms. Shafik wrote to the campus that she was taking an “extraordinary step because these are extraordinary circumstances.”

The encampment, she said, “severely disrupts campus life, and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.”

The students who created the encampment, she said, “violated a long list of rules and policies.”

Other schools have also turned to tougher measures. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Brown University have recently acted against student protesters, including making arrests .

And the leaders of schools like Vanderbilt and Pomona have defended suspending or expelling student protesters, saying that they are not interested in dialogue, but disruption.

Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the free speech and legal defense group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said “there can be good reasons” for removing students if they are violating neutrally applied policies.

But, she added, Columbia compromised itself when Ms. Shafik suggested to Congress, among other things, that the university may have investigated students and faculty for protected speech. “That’s very troubling,” Ms. Morey said, adding that consistently applied and viewpoint-neutral policies were the way out of this mess for Columbia and other universities.

Angus Johnston, a historian who studies and supports student activism, said he sees echoes of another protest in what is happening today.

In April 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War, Columbia and Barnard students commandeered five campus buildings, occupied the president’s office, and shut down the university’s operations.

After a week, the police moved to quell the protest, leading to more than 700 arrests. Officers trampled protesters, hit them with nightsticks, punched and kicked them and dragged them down stairs.

The outrage over the arrests helped students. They won their demands, including cutting ties with the Pentagon on Vietnam War research and gaining amnesty for demonstrators.

The 1968 protest, Mr. Johnston said, was “the beginning of a moment when American universities realized that their approach to suppressing protests wasn’t working.” And after student deaths at Kent State and Jackson State, administrators became averse to that sort of confrontation with their students, Mr. Johnston said.

The tactics of student protesters at Columbia today are much more benign than those used in 1968, Mr. Johnston added.

“When I first read about it, I assumed that they had taken over a building, right?” Mr. Johnston said. “But, no, they took over a lawn. That is the least disruptive way of occupying space on a campus.”

“I’m really worried,” he added, “about a spiral in which suppressing protest is going to lead to more aggressive protest.”

On Thursday night, at least 250 Columbia students gathered to cheer on their classmates, who were leaving One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan after being arrested earlier in the day.

Catherine Elias, 26, a master’s student at the School of International and Public Affairs, was part of a small group of students who set up the encampment. Roughly 36 hours later, the police zip-tied her wrists and put her in a police bus with about 20 other protesters, who sang and chanted.

They were eventually issued summonses and released. Ms. Elias planned to go back and protest.

“I believe there was a spark today that’s going to spread across Columbia, across campuses in the U.S.,” she said, adding, “Columbia has no idea what they have unleashed.”

Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.

Vimal Patel writes about higher education with a focus on speech and campus culture. More about Vimal Patel

Chelsia Rose Marcius covers breaking news and criminal justice for the Metro desk, with a focus on the New York City Police Department. More about Chelsia Rose Marcius