2018 Morrison Prize winners announced

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ASU Now reported that this year's Morrison Prize was awarded to authors navigating rocky terrain of partisan politics. Even with widespread agreement that the world’s climate is rapidly changing, the United States has struggled to combat the issue, hindered by divisive partisanship. Hari M. Osofsky and Jacqueline Peel won for their academic article, “Energy Partisanship,” which not only outlines the critical importance of bridging and circumventing the partisan divide, but also provides guidance for doing so. Specifically, they suggest looking beyond the legislative branch of the federal government, where consensus seems especially elusive.

The Morrison Prize, established in 2015, is administered through the program on law and sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. The annual contest awards a $10,000 prize to the author of the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year. The prize is named after its funder, Richard N. Morrison, who is also a co-founder of Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU.

Osofsky serves as the dean of Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs. Peel is associate dean of the Masters program at the University of Melbourne Law School in Melbourne, Australia. And she says the political challenges hindering climate policy are not unique to the U.S.

Osofsky and Peel, the third winners of the Morrison Prize, will be honored in person May 11 in Phoenix at the fourth annual Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators.

READ: A road map for climate-change policy