Chris Baird '05 wins Burton Award for Legal Writing
Chris Baird ’05 is one of 15 winners nationwide of the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which honors excellence and clarity in legal writing. Baird won for his note “Trapped in the Greenhouse?: Regulating Carbon Dioxide after FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.,.” which appeared in Duke Law Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1.
The Burton National Awards Program was established in 1999 to reward practitioners and law students who use “plain, clear and concise language, and avoid archaic, stilted legalese,” according to the Web site of the non-profit, academic Burton Foundation. The Foundation and awards program was founded by William C. Burton, author of Burton’s Legal Thesaurus and a proponent of “modernized” legal writing.
Baird is currently editor-in-chief of Duke Law Journal. Following graduation he will clerk for Judge Ronald Murray Gould of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The Burton Awards were announced on April 14 th and will be presented June 6, 2005, in a ceremony in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress.