Application Information for Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) Program

Application Materials

To apply to the S.J.D. program, applicants must complete the relevant parts of the Graduate Program's application materials. These call for applicants to provide information about themselves and the ideas they propose to pursue in their S.J.D. studies, copies of their LL.M. paper, letters of recommendation from their LL.M. paper supervisor and the Harvard Law School faculty member who proposes to serve as their dissertation supervisor, transcripts from the university at which they received their highest law degree, and certain other information. To obtain copies of these application materials, please either download the application from our website or ask us to send you a copy.

An important part of the application is the dissertation proposal. The proposal (which should be between 3,000 to 5,000 words) should be sufficiently detailed to permit the Committee on Graduate Studies to judge whether it is likely to make a significant contribution to legal scholarship. The dissertation proposal should contain an overall description of the applicant's research objectives--the ideas the applicant hopes to advance in the dissertation; why achieving those objectives would be valuable; and more specific descriptions of the applicant's proposed fields of study, including the courses the applicant intends to pursue and the proposed reading list for each field. Applicants may wish to indicate how the proposed dissertation relates to their experience to date, including the LL.M. paper.

As part of the dissertation proposal, applicants must identify and describe three or four underlying fields of study and the proposed faculty supervisor for each field. Fields are areas of study in law or other disciplines which are relevant to the dissertation topic and in which the applicant plans to gain working knoweldge. Frequently, these are areas in which the applicant can imagine teaching a course. Applicants may wish to include one interdisciplinary field, a field that seeks to combine study of the law with insights from a discipline other than law (such as economics, history, philosophy, or political science).

Definition of fields may be difficult and require some thought. Although applicants are advised to consult their proposed supervisors about field definition, some general guidelines follow. First, a field may be viewed as a community of people who communicate with each other in writing. Thus field definition goes together with creating a bibliography. Second, fields should not be so broad that they would be impossible to master in one year. Third, skills areas such as statistics, calculus, languages, etc. generally are not considered fields. However, a course in such a subject may appropriately be included as part of the study plan for a particular field. Finally, in identifying possible fields, applicants are asked to be realistic about their abilities and experience to date in particular areas of study.

Application Deadlines

The deadline for submission of applications for admission to S.J.D. degree candidacy beginning in the fall of 2009 is April 1, 2009. The Graduate Program Admissions Office must receive all application materials other than recommendations by this date. The deadline for receipt of letters of recommendation is May 1, 2009. However, the Graduate Program may grant extensions of this deadline to current Harvard LL.M. candidates in order to permit the supervisors of their LL.M. papers sufficient time to evaluate those papers. Admission decisions will generally be made by early June.