About LSEJ

Legal Scholarship for Equal Justice (LSEJ) is a project of the Minnesota Justice Foundation (MJF) designed to address broad legal issues of current importance to equal justice. LSEJ encourages scholarly work by Minnesota law students and professors that contributes to equal justice for all.

LSEJ compiles a research topic list, which is designed to help students and faculty find topics with the potential to make a practical and immediate impact on equal justice. Past topics include Hmong Marriage Legislation, Criminalization of the Mentally Ill, The Connection between Traffic Fines and Poverty, Housing Problems for Evicted Tenants, Mixed Use of Brownfield Reclamation, Using Law and Medicine to Reduce Asthma, Tenant Blacklisting, and Racism in the Child Protection System, to name just a few.

Potential research topics are submitted to LSEJ by practitioners, professors, and others. Each topic has a “field contact” who can provide more information about the topic and help with the research project. LSEJ encourages law school faculty and students to consult the list when selecting topics for law review articles, notes, term papers, independent studies, and any other legal research and writing they are undertaking. Visit our Links to find out how to propose a research topic.

LSEJ also offers a seminar in equal justice called “Equal Justice — Applied Research”. This course is offered jointly each year by the three Minnesota law schools. During the class, students produce research papers on topics from the LSEJ topic list. The completed works are presented to the legal community and are posted on this web site.

Brief History

Formed in 2002, LSEJ is designed to encourage a wide variety of legal scholarship with a practical and immediate impact on equal justice, including law review articles and notes, independent research projects, term papers, amicus briefs, and draft legislation.

To guide this project, MJF has assembled an LSEJ Advisory Committee composed of deans and faculty from the three law Minnesota law schools, a justice from the Minnesota Supreme Court, the State Public Defender, directors of Legal Services programs, representatives of the Minnesota Bar Association, and practicing attorneys from the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

To learn more about LSEJ, please contact Anna Beadle, Executive Director, Minnesota Justice Foundation, at anna@mnjustice.org or 612-625-0777.