“As lawyers, we have the responsibility not just to create scholarship, but to engage scholarship,” said BYU Law Professor Paul Stancil at a recent faculty scholarship panel.
Addressing the BYU Law community, Stancil joined Professors Aaron Nielson, Gladriel Shobe, and Lisa Sun to discuss recent faculty research and encourage students to engage in the exploration of ideas.
“New ideas… are inspired by old ideas,” said Dean Gordon Smith, panel moderator. “When you’re gathering theory and insights from others who have thought a lot about another subject… you’re giving yourself the raw materials to come up with your own new ideas.”
The professors who participated in the panel shared the sentiment that impactful research starts with a question and that questions students ask can lead to insightful research. “Give yourself the permission to have ideas. You are bright. You are able. You are thoughtful. You also care about [things],” Stancil said. “That combination of things gives you the ability, even as a law student, to do stuff that actually matters.”
Over the past seven years, BYU Law faculty has continued to create and engage in meaningful scholarship–with publication citations increasing nearly 35 percent, going from 4,800 citations to 7,300 citations. Commenting on this statistic, Dean Smith said, “Our faculty write on a wide swath of topics about the law. That’s something we pride ourselves on: being a good general Law School.”
The breadth of research covered by the panel included administrative law agencies and D.C.Circuit decisions, tax law, economics of litigation and the political process, disaster law, and environmental law.
Gladriel Shobe
Tax Law
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Aaron Nielson
Administrative Law
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Lisa Grow Sun
Disaster, environmental, and First Amendment law
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Paul Stancil
Economics of litigation and the political process
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