4th NLUO-CLS Essay Writing Competition 2026 [Prizes Rs 15,000; Publication in CLS Blog]

National Law University Odisha, Cuttack was established by Act 4 of 2008 of the Odisha State Legislature, with a stated vision of advancing learning, teaching, research and the diffusion of knowledge in the field of law, and of developing the professional skills of those intending to enter advocacy, the judicial services and legal services. The University has set up a number of dedicated research centres and societies so that students can pursue individual interests alongside their coursework.

The Constitutional Law Society (CLS) is one such initiative of NLUO. It promotes study, research and informed deliberation in constitutional law and its allied subjects, with a policy and application oriented purpose.

The 4th NLUO-CLS Essay Writing Competition invites participation from all students of law, in the form of essays deliberating on topics of contemporary relevance. The competition is conducted entirely in online mode.

The Indian Constitution treats liberty as a foundational value while allowing the State to impose reasonable restrictions on specific grounds such as security, decency, morality and public order. Contemporary practice, however, raises questions about how that balance actually works in application. Prolonged pre-trial detention under statutes such as the UAPA and the PMLA, extended internet suspensions, revisions to electoral rolls and restrictions on public assembly are typically justified on security or public-order grounds, and their consistency with proportionality standards has been debated in both judicial reasoning and academic scholarship.

Central to the debate is whether the proportionality test, as articulated by Indian courts, is applied with the analytical rigour it demands, or whether it is invoked as a formal step without corresponding substantive scrutiny. Participants are invited to examine critically how proportionality functions as a doctrinal safeguard in Indian constitutional law.

Indicative topics:

• The Threshold for Bail under the UAPA and the Presumption of Guilt
• Regulating Hate Speech in India: Doctrinal Gaps Between Free Expression and Public Order
• The Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls: Verification or Disenfranchisement?
• Morality and Decency: An Unreasonable Restriction on Freedom of Speech in India?
• The Right to Protest, Civil Disobedience, and the Doctrine of Constitutional Morality

Constitutions rarely emerge in isolation. They are more often products of borrowing, adaptation and reinterpretation across jurisdictions. The Constitution of India itself stands testament to this, having drawn from the British, American, Irish, Canadian and Australian Constitutions among others. But borrowing a constitutional provision from another country is never a straightforward act of copying and pasting.

When a right or a legal doctrine is taken out of the social and political setting in which it originally developed, it inevitably changes as it adapts to a new constitutional system. This raises questions of legitimacy and fidelity: does comparative borrowing enrich constitutional interpretation, or does it risk imposing frameworks ill-suited to local realities? The theme invites participants to examine the process, promise and perils of constitutional transplantation, and whether borrowed provisions can ever be said to be truly indigenised.

Indicative topics:

• Judicial Borrowing: Comparative Reasoning and the Use of Foreign Precedent by the Supreme Court of India
• Federalism Re-Imagined: Comparative Lessons from Cooperative and Competitive Federal Models
• Constitutional Amendment Design: Rigidity, Flexibility, and Comparative Amendment Procedures
• The Use of U.S. First Amendment Jurisprudence in Indian Free Speech Cases: Consistent Doctrine or Selective Application?
• The Directive Principles of State Policy: An Indigenous Innovation or a Transplant without Context?

• Students pursuing a Five-Year or Three-Year LL.B. discipline
• Students pursuing a One-Year or Two-Year LL.M. discipline
• Students pursuing any other undergraduate or postgraduate law degree from any recognised university

Co-authorship is permitted, with a separate registration fee for co-authored entries.

The list of indicative topics under each theme is exactly that: indicative and not mandatory. Participants are free to write on any other topic falling within the ambit of the main theme they choose.

• Submissions must be made in .doc or .docx format (Word 2007 or later).
• All submissions are to be made through the submission Google Form. The file must be named after the author, and the co-author where applicable, for example John Davidson.docx or John Davidson, Jay David.docx.
• The submission form asks for name, email and contact number. The same contact details must be used in the submission form as in the registration form.
• No indication of the author's identity should appear anywhere within the manuscript. A breach leads to outright rejection of the submission.
• Manuscript word limit: 1,500 to 2,500 words, excluding the abstract.
• An abstract of 50 to 100 words, not counted within the word limit, must appear at the top of the manuscript.
• Citations should be done by hyperlinking. Where hyperlinks are not available, any uniform method of end-noting may be used.
• Submission date: on or before 18 September 2026.
• The essay must be free of errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation. The paper must be original and plagiarism free. Use of AI is strictly prohibited.

Formatting: Times New Roman, font size 12, line spacing 1.5, all text justified.

All essays go through a double-blind peer-review process, in two stages:

• Technical Review: the article is checked for plagiarism and AI usage, along with language and grammar.
• Content Review: review of whether it meets the criteria of contemporariness, relevance and novelty.

Authors are recommended to visit the CLS-NLUO Blog to get a better understanding of the type of submissions the Editorial Board approves.

Manuscripts not in conformity with the guidelines may be rejected at the sole discretion of the Editorial Board. The Board reserves the right to send manuscripts back to authors for modification at any stage in the event of non-conformity. The Board may, in its absolute discretion, waive any of the rules or amend the process. In case of any dispute or ambiguity, the decision of the Editorial Board is final and binding.

• Grammar and Language: the language must be crisp and concise. A direct statement or argument is preferred over an indirect one, and minimum use of the passive voice is recommended. Authors must be familiar with the usage of every term they use. Marks may be deducted for unnecessary repetition, long-winded sentences and irrelevant rhetoric.
• Structure and Logical Coherence: the manuscript must be logically sound and appropriate for the objective it seeks to achieve. Marks may be deducted for arguments built on incorrect premises or presumptions, absence of a clear structure, or absence of proper logical flow.
• Referencing and Research: the manuscript must reflect substantial rather than superficial research. The author needs to be aware of what citation is required in the circumstances, when to cite and when not to, and the relevance of that citation.
• Contemporary Relevance: manuscripts are expected to include recent developments on the topic. A manuscript possesses contemporary relevance when it deals with trending societal and legal issues that have not been given the attention they deserve, or with a topic that had faded from public memory but has re-emerged. The relevance of the topic should be highlighted by the author in the introduction.
• Contribution to Existing Literature: where the topic has been written about extensively in the past, the author must consider what the manuscript contributes to the discussion. Merely quoting or summarising precedents is inadequate. Writing in a more innovative manner and providing a novel explanation or interpretation of a concept is appreciated.

The registration fee is non-refundable.

• NLUO students: Rs 250 for single authorship, Rs 400 for co-authorship
• Non-NLUO students: Rs 300 for single authorship, Rs 500 for co-authorship

Payment: participants pay the registration fee through the ICICI Bank Eazypay portal:

• Visit the Eazypay portal and enter the Institution Name as National Law University, then click Go.
• Fill in email id, mobile number, amount and student name.
• Roll or Enrolment No.: NLUO students enter their own roll or enrolment number; all others enter 131.
• Semester: NLUO students enter their semester number; all others enter 11.
• Fill in year of study and payment date.
• Purpose: mention 4th CLS Essay Competition.
• Click Submit after entering the captcha and OTP.

The auto-generated payment receipt must be uploaded in the registration form.

Registration is to be completed through the registration Google Form by 28 August 2026. Submission of the essay is to be made through the separate submission Google Form by 18 September 2026. Details provided in the registration form must match those in the submission form.