First Place: Jeremiah Chin, Red Law, White Supremacy: Cherokee Freedmen, Tribal Sovereignty and the Colonial Feedback Loop
Second Place: Jennifer Walston, Arizona’s Domestic Violence Victims Need a More Safety-Centered Approach in Their Pursuit of Family Court Orders
The Ross-Blakley Law Library at the Sandra O’Connor College of Law is pleased to announce the 2014 recipients of The Ross-Blakley Law Library Award for Exemplary Student Research. Jeremiah Chin is the first place award recipient for his paper, Red Law, White Supremacy: Cherokee Freedmen, Tribal Sovereignty and the Colonial Feedback Loop and Jennifer Walston earned second-place honors for, Arizona’s Domestic Violence Victims Need a More Safety-Centered Approach in Their Pursuit of Family Court Orders. Jeremiah Chin and Jennifer Walston’s papers demonstrate sophistication and originality in the use of research materials, exceptional innovation in research strategy, and skillful synthesis of research results into a comprehensive scholarly analysis.
A review panel comprised of librarians Victoria Trotta and Beth DiFelice and Associate Clinical Professor Kimberly Holst selected the winners from the competitive entries.
In addition to receiving a monetary award, the winners are also invited to publish their papers in the Law Library’s digital scholarship repository, and to feature their papers in the Law Library Display Case.
Chin’s research highlights the intersections of race and sovereignty and raises important questions about shifting conceptions of citizenship, self-determination, racial identity, and indigeneity in the United States. His paper blends legal and academic publications, secondary historical research, archival research and case law from several different courts. Chin says one of the big discoveries he found while researching for the paper was not only the amount of Cherokee law that was digitally archived online, but also the extent to which the Dawes Rolls and other historical government documents are available through the United States Government Archives. The discovery of these resources allowed him to look at the form and content of the Dawes Rolls, a crucial document for analysis, and even look-up the names of individuals mentioned within the research study. He goes on to say that unlike many other papers he has written, this paper mixes archival research with a case that has yet to reach a final decision in federal court. Therefore his research not only encompassed historical texts, but also included different Google alerts and social media to locate information about the ongoing cases and conflicts to ensure that the case law is up-to-date.
http://www.law.asu.edu/library/2014RecipientsoftheRossBlakleyLawLibraryAwardforExemplaryStudentResearch.aspx