KU moot court team to compete in Taiwan

By Micole Aronowitz

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The University of Kansas’ moot court team will compete in the international finals of the European Law Students’ Association Moot Court Competition from May 19 to 24 in Taipei, Taiwan.

The purpose of moot court is to simulate presenting a case in front of the Supreme Court, where there is no jury present, only judges.

The four third-year law students participating have been preparing for the competition since December.

Beau Jackson, Ben Sharp, Christina Elmore and Carrie Bader will be the first team to represent the University at the world-level of this competition. The team is coached by Raj Bhala, the Raymond F. Rice Distinguished Professor of Law.

Each spring the School of Law has an in-house moot court competition. Bader, who is from Prairie Village, said the competition generally dealt with a U.S. constitutional problem. She said the idea was to mimic a case that would go before the U.S. Supreme Court. This year, there were close to 50 teams that competed in the in-house competition. The top few teams make up the moot court council and those teams go to different national competitions. This team advanced to the final round of the North American regional, March 12 in Washington, D.C., which qualified them for the international finals.

“The moot court experience is meant to simulate what it would be like in front of a panel of judges at an appellate level,” Elmore, who is from Larned, said.

Elmore said another advantage of moot court was that it helped prepare students for what lawyers do in every day practice. She said often times law classes focused on learning the law through books, while moot court provided experience in public speaking.

“I know I can go into a court room and argue my case in front of a judge and I’ll be fine,” Bader said. “It gives you a lot of confidence.”

Jackson, who is from Andover, said the ELSA moot court competition involved law students from around the world who compete and present a hypothetical legal problem that would take place at the World Trade Organization. He said the nature of the problem they have to solve for this year’s competition is similar to real world problems that come up in international trade.

The team is preparing arguments for both sides of a mock case about two countries that have opposing viewpoints on international trade. One country is putting up restrictions on products it thinks damages the environment. The other country specializes in exporting those particular products. It is experiencing difficulty exporting its products to countries and is losing money because the other country has put up barriers on letting these products in.

“That’s what makes it tricky,” Jackson said. “You have to be able to do both sides.”

To prepare for the competition, Elmore said the team had been practicing with attorneys in the Kansas City area. She said the attorneys helped by grilling them with questions similar to the ones that would be asked by the panel of judges at the international finals.

The team will be competing against 19 teams from each continent in Taipei. Bader said each time they argue, three of the four members would have 35 minutes to present their case and answer questions asked by the panel. She said Jackson and Sharp would speak each time because they specialized in international law during their time in law school. Either Bader or Elmore will be the third group member to speak depending on the argument.

Bader said the team invested a lot of time practicing for the upcoming competition. She said she had no prior knowledge or experience with international trade law, and had to do a lot of research and self-educating on the topic. She said learning about it has been fascinating.

“It’s been an eye-opening experience for me,” Bader said. “It’s something I never intended to learn about but I’m glad I did.”

Although the team’s goal is to win the competition, Jackson said it was important to represent the University well.

“It’s definitely an honor to be representing KU,” Jackson said. “We have great faculty to teach us in this area. They have prepared us really well.”

— — Edited by Heather Melanson

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