Hello! Have you ever wondered what Moot Court is? If so, you're in the right place!
The Basics
Moot Court is Appellant style Advocacy at the Supreme Court Level. These are cases that have already been held and decided, but someone is appealing that decision (for whatever reason). In Moot Court, The American Moot Court Association (AMCA) puts together a fake case consisting of two constitutional issues. These issues are typically picked based on recent district court, or Supreme Court hot ticket issues. Last year (my first year!!!), the issues dealt with the fifth amendment due process rights and first amendment free speech rights. The case dealt with a man (William DeNolf) who aided in the suicide of his girlfriend (Bobbi Bronner). This year, DeNolf is a 40 year old man who hates Affirmative Action...yikes!!! But let's dive deeper into what this all means
The Case
First, some basics. Everything, besides the case precedent used for each issue, is fake. DeNolf is always the main guy of the case, and Bobbi Bronner always shows up somewhere. The case brief AMCA sends out is one from a district court that upheld the lower court's decision. This brief holds all the information for the case: the background, the issues, and the legal precedent mooters must follow. Undergraduate Moot Court is a closed case competition, meaning you can only use the cases provided in the record (which are listed at the end). Remember those two issues I talked about earlier? Well, Moot Court is a partner based competition, one person being issue one and the other being issue two. Issue one goes first, and typically gives the rebuttal, but we'll go more into the actual competitions later. DeNolf is always the Petitioner, and the Respondent is always some entity of the fictional state of Olympus. But enough foreplay, let's get into what this year's case is.
"William DeNolf is a 40-year old white male who has no children and has never been married" are the first words used to describe our titular main character, who was just denied his application to a (fake) prestigous Criminal Justice program at Olympus State University housed at the Jackson Kelly school of Criminal Justice(refered to as The School). He was denied admission because of The School's affirmative action policies that sought to bring in more women. Disgruntled, he ends up appearing on Fox News, attending rallies, and hosting a TED talk, all talking about his negative views on affirmative action. DeNolf was fired and sued for wrongfull termination and that the admissions policies of The School violate the equal protections clause. This brings us into...
The Issues
Issue one for the case deals with the 14th amendments equal protection clause. DeNolf is claiming that, through The School's preferential weight towards women in the admissions process, his 14th amendment rights were violated. There are eight cases you can use in your advocacy of your side, seven of which being Supreme Court precedent. These cases show the progression of the courts opinions on issues dealing with gender based classifications, and affirmative action. As you probably know, the Supreme Court recently decided that race-based qualifications for admissions are unconstitutional in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. This case overturned a case from 2003, Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action. What the court did not decide is on if gender-based affirmative action is unconstitutional. Issue two people must focus hard on case precedent, and decide how to argue for, or against, the admissions policy at The School.
Issue two deals with first amendment free expression rights. Remember when I said DeNolf got fired? Yeah, that was from his teaching position at OSU (y'know, the school that hosted the program he was hating on). There are eleven cases you are given to argue for your side, only four being Supreme Court precedent. The rest are district courts using two tests defined by SCOTUS to determine if an employee's speech was protected. These tests are the Pickering-Connick test (defined in Pickering v. Board of Education) and the Garcetti test (defined in Garcetti v. Ceballos). Not all speech is protected, and you can't get away with everything you say while employed as a public employee. The Pickering-Connick test provided protections for speech that is (1) made as a private citizen (2) is about a matter of public concern and (3) the interest of the employee outweighs the interest of the employer. However, later on Garcetti decided that any speech made pursuant of official duties is not protected. Issue two people have to dig deep into the cases to determine just exactly where the line is drawn between these two tests, and just which one should be used to determine the constitutionality of DeNolf's firing.
