Below please find the Pledge of Academic Honesty that you signed when you began your studies at NYU School of Law. Please be reminded that academic honesty is a serious and important matter. At all times students should comply with and adhere to rules and policies related to the same.
Pledge of Academic Honesty
This Pledge of Academic Honesty relates specifically to the provisions contained in the Academic Policies Guide that set forth the prohibitions against cheating, plagiarism, forgery, and improper submission of written work.
Section B (II) (A) states in relevant part (pages 26-27):
"Cheating, plagiarism, forgery of academic documents, or multiple submissions of substantially the same work for duplicate credits, with intent to defraud. Plagiarism is an academic crime and a serious breach of Law School rules. Faculty and students are obligated to report cases of plagiarism to the Vice Dean for appropriate action. Among the possible sanctions for plagiarism are expulsion, suspension, grade reduction (including a grade of "FX" indicating a failure for plagiarism), and a statement of censure placed in the student's file. All disciplinary code violations will be made available to bar admission committees and others on proper waiver of confidentiality.
A student's submission of work (including journal submissions) under the student's name constitutes a representation that the research, analysis, and articulation of the work is exclusively that of the student, except as expressly attributed to another in the work, and that it has been prepared exclusively for the particular course, seminar, or use entitling the student to credit.
Plagiarism occurs when one, either intentionally or through gross negligence, passes off someone else's words as one's own, or presents an idea or product copied or paraphrased from an existing source without giving credit to that source.
Although not within the definition of plagiarism, it is also forbidden, without permission of the instructor, to submit the same work or a portion of the same work for academic credit in more than one setting, whether the work was previously submitted at this school or elsewhere.
What follows are some examples-by no means exhaustive-of common situations in which plagiarism (or other conduct prohibited by this policy) has occurred. These are meant to be purely illustrative and in no sense establish floors or minimal requirements.
- Example 1: A student submits work in which portions are copied verbatim from another text without quotation marks and a citation.
- Example 2: A student rearranges or paraphrases portions of the copied material, but still fails to put verbatim language in quotations or to cite the source for material that has been paraphrased.
- Example 3: A student uses part of a paper previously submitted in another course, without the permission of the instructor to whom the student is submitting the paper.
- Example 4: A student relies on the discussion of Source A that is contained in Source B but fails to cite Source B.
- Example 5: A student takes notes from various sources onto notecards or a computer; the notes include both verbatim quotes and the student's own thoughts. The student transfers information from the notecards or computer without preserving quotation marks. Even if the student was pressed for time, or wrote the paper hurriedly, plagiarism has occurred.
- Example 6: A student downloads work from the Internet and modifies it in important respects to conform to a specific topic without acknowledging the original source.
Students are advised to steer clear of the border line. It is never a problem to recognize that ideas and arguments were derived from another source or to use quotation marks for words or phrases borrowed from someone else's work. Where doubts exist, students should seek advice from their instructor.
6. Submission of paper or written work, or portion thereof, for credit, of work that has been previously submitted in identical or similar form in another course, or any other forum, either within the Law School, or any other setting."