Jonathan B. Brown

2018 Warren E. Burger Prize for Writing

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA—Jonathan B. Brown has been selected to receive the prestigious American Inns of Court 2018 Warren E. Burger Prize for Writing. The prize will be awarded at the organization’s Celebration of Excellence held at the Supreme Court of the United States on October 20, 2018 and hosted by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Warren E. Burger Prize is a writing competition designed to promote scholarship in the areas of professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence and recognizes recipients with publication of their winning essay in South Carolina Law Review and a cash prize of $5,000.

In his winning essay, “Two Approaches to the Modern Reality of Temporary Cross-Border Legal Practice: The United States and the European Community,” Brown observes that, while “the legal system has responded [to globalization] by similarly expanding legal practice across jurisdictional borders,” the regulation of that practice primarily rests with the states. “This has the potential to present a unique problem in today’s globalized environment as lawyers—largely confined within the state where they are licensed and admitted to practice—encounter legal problems and issues that necessarily extend across state lines,” he writes.

Brown is a third-year student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where he serves as managing editor of the Law Review and as a teaching assistant. Brown was awarded the Joseph E. Stevens, Jr., Memorial Prize for outstanding legal writing by a first-year law student.

He is a legal intern in the Appellate Division of the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the District of Kansas, where he has drafted several petitions for certiorari before the Supreme Court of the United States on constitutional issues such as probable cause and the applicability of plain error standard of review. Brown also serves as a pro se writ clerk in the Prisoner Pro Se Office at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. In that role, he researches and analyzes prisoner pro se petitions before the court, and drafts orders on habeas corpus petitions and dispositive motions.

An alumnus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Brown graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. His article, “Political Ideology and the Judiciary: Conservatism in the Supreme Court,” was published in Lucerna, UMKC’s undergraduate research journal. He has served as a research assistant to three law school professors and as a judicial intern for Judge Brian C. Wimes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western District of Missouri.