Student Success in Prestigious Law Essay Competitions

We are delighted to celebrate the outstanding achievements of one of our Sixth Form students who recently excelled in two internationally renowned essay competitions: the Trinity College Cambridge Law Essay Competition and the John Locke Institute Essay Prize. Through rigorous research, thoughtful analysis, and a passion for justice, Eesaa explored complex legal questions ranging from universal legal aid to the ethics of punishment. His work placed him among the top entrants globally, earning recognition from leading academic institutions and an invitation to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Eesaa’s story:

“Earlier this year, I participated in two essay competitions the Trinity College Cambridge Law Essay competition in April and the John Locke Institute Essay Prize in June.

For Trinity, the question was, “Should governments provide a publicly funded legal service which is free at the point of access, as many governments provide a free public health service?” I argued that access to justice should be understood as a basic constitutional right, not as a charitable offering. I used the analogy of health care, noting how legal issues can appear very suddenly and again, without professional assistance, can lead to very serious consequences, such as deportation, imprisonment, and homelessness. I interjected cognitive sciences research which shows that legal language is so abstract and technical, only the most legal-trained minds can even attempt to make sense of it alone. This made the case that lawyers are, in a sense, translators of the law, in the same way that physicians are translators of medical knowledge to treatment.

I also wrote about the principle of subsidiarity, and the necessity of proximity of legal assistance to the community. I cited examples of mobile legal clinics in France and examples of student-run legal services in Uruguay as models saving costs in government funded legal services, while also increasing community trust in the legal processes. I then compared various systems abroad, such as Finland’s hybrid model of legal insurance and income tested aid, Brazil’s constitutionally provided public defender service and Canada’s dual national and provincial systems. All of this fed into the conclusion that universal legal aid is achievable, practical, and necessary if we are to have rights that are real rather than theoretical. That essay put me in the top ten percent of entries and I received an invite to Trinity for the prize giving in July.

The day itself was really nice. There were about fifteen of us there, and once we had all received our certificates, we had about twenty minutes of open discussion with the Fellows. We spoke about the ideas brought up in our essays and how different people had dealt with the same question, as well as more broadly about law and Cambridge life. It was relaxed but it was definitely stimulating to hear how other people thought about the same issues from completely different angles. After that we were shown around some of the college gardens and then refreshments were served in one of the halls, including sticky chocolate cake which somehow made it feel even more friendly.

For the John Locke Institute competition, I chose the question “Should the law treat offenders better than they deserve?” In this essay I focused on whether strict retributive theories of justice work in practice. I began by outlining the basic retributive idea that punishment should reflect what a person deserves, then went on to suggest that the idea is more complicated by concepts like moral luck, where something that is out of the control of an individual shapes the choices they made, and the way they /others were judged. I then covered ideas like restorative justice, which is focused on being restorative repairing harm and reintegrating offenders – as opposed to predicting/describing previous actions to see what they ‘deserve’. The concluding thought I came to was that sometimes the law should treat offenders better than they deserve, not to be soft, but to better realize proportionality, rehabilitation, and ultimately a fairer society overall.

That essay was shortlisted – which means I was in the top 18.65% of entries, out of 63,000 of entries from all over the world! The final results of if I received a prize will be released in October, but ultimately just getting shortened given the competitive nature of the field is already rewarding.

Both competitions allowed me to step outside the mainstream A-level syllabus, and to interpret law in a much more independent and creative way. The Trinity essay made me really think about the law as a part of the basic infrastructure of society, and the John Locke essay let me, for a little while, go in search of the big ideas surrounding justice and punishment. The prize giving at Trinity also allowed me to glean a sense of what studying law at Cambridge would be like, which was both motivational and memorable.”