Call for Papers: 12th Annual Emerging Scholars Conference in Public Law on “Public Law in an Age of Institutional Transformation” [Austin, USA, 25-26 February 2027]

The Emerging Scholars Conference in Public Law is an annual conference held at The University of Texas at Austin, now in its 12th year. It brings together graduate students and early-career scholars to share their work on public law and build connections in the field, and it draws national and international participation from scholars working across all methodologies and all aspects of public law.

The conference was started in 2014 by UT public law students and continues to be organised by UT graduate students in public law. The 2027 edition is led by Elizabeth Donaway, a PhD student in UT’s Department of Government, and the call is published by the university’s Center for Law and Democracy. It will take place on 25 and 26 February 2027 at UT Austin.

Courts, legislatures, executives, administrative agencies and supranational bodies are operating in a rapidly changing political and technological environment. The conference invites papers that investigate how institutions change, why they change, and what the consequences are for governance, rights and political order. The call poses questions such as:

• Why do some legal institutions adapt to political pressure while others resist it?
• How do executives, legislatures and courts redistribute power during periods of institutional reform and crises?
• What explains variation in judicial, constitutional or institutional resilience across countries and over time?
• How do political parties, social movements, public opinion and organised interest groups shape legal institutions from outside the courtroom?
• How is artificial intelligence changing the exercise and oversight of public power in administrative decision-making and adjudication?
• How does the diffusion of artificial intelligence on both sides of the citizen-state relationship alter administrative capacity and political accountability?

The organisers welcome theoretical, empirical, comparative, doctrinal and interdisciplinary submissions across the conference’s core scholarly tracks:

• Comparative Constitutionalism
• Judicial Politics
• Law and Society
• Constitutional Theory
• Supranational and International Courts
• Methodology

On the submission form, applicants also choose a primary method: quantitative, mixed methods, case study, formal theory/modelling, doctrinal/legal analysis, normative/political theory, historical/archival, experimental, or computational/text analysis.

Submissions are open to graduate students and early-career scholars from around the world. The academic-status options on the form are PhD Student, JD Student, Postdoctoral Fellow, Visiting Scholar, Assistant Professor and Other Early Career Scholar, so doctoral researchers and early-career law faculty from India can apply. Co-authored papers can be submitted.

Submit an abstract of 250 words (the form caps it at about 1,500 characters) through the proposal submission form. The form also asks for:

• Your name, email address and institutional affiliation
• Academic status
• Paper title
• Co-author(s), if any
• Scholarly track and primary method
• A brief biography of the author (up to about 1,500 characters)

Abstracts are due by 16 October 2026 at 11:59 PM US Central Time, which is 10:29 AM IST on 17 October 2026. Indian applicants should aim to submit by the evening of 16 October IST to be safe.

Neither the call nor the submission form mentions a submission or registration fee. The call does not mention travel or accommodation support, so plan on covering the cost of travelling to Austin for the in-person conference.

Fill in the Microsoft Forms proposal submission form linked on this page before the deadline. Questions about the conference can be sent to utpubliclawconference@gmail.com.