Moot court championships

My time in Bloomington flew by. In the morning, while Tay went to interview for an editorial position on the Law Review Journal, I skyped Saori for awhile to hear about her day in Germany, which was great to see her again.

After Tay came back it was mid-afternoon, so we wanted to get dressed up for the evening’s events, which was the epic finale to the Moot Court championships.

But first, we walked over to a bohemian coffee shop/cafe called the “Runcible Spoon.” It was a really comfortable cluttered place which smelled like patchouli. The bathroom still had a standing bathtub which had been repurposed into a fish tank complete with a plastic octopus. Good food. I got basically a gourmet egg mcmuffin and Tay got homefries with buiscuits and gravy. Tasty, not too expensive. Over coffee, we debated my travel plans and worked out an alternative routing for me which made a lot more sense, and then I called mom and dad and we put the plan into action.

And then he told me about Moot court.
Moot court is basically fake court where to law students take opposing sides in a fictitious case and prepare a brief and an oral argument before a panel of judges. At the starting tier, something like 160 students entered, and only 32 were selected to move on, and then there was a third and fourth rounds to eliminate all but the final four competitors.

I kept thinking about it like it was going to be a wizard’s duel a la Harry Potter, although Tay told me it was not going to b nearly so dramatic. After a very stiff Vesper martini at Tay’s friend Zach’s apartment, the three of us headed over. Zach made it to the quarterfinals and he had to wear a suit and was compelled to come. The final is a pretty big deal- the courtroom is packed with students and they actually stream the proceedings into the adjacent classroom for the overflow.

It was actually a lot like community theater: student ushers handed out pamphlets at the door, its hot and stuffy and there’s an air of excitement and anticipation. The pamphlet sets out the synopsis of the case which is damned near identical to the background of a play you’re about to see: “The sun is setting on the sleepy city of Barksville in the State of Franklin. Life has been good, but with the economic recession, more and more homeowners are losing their homes, etc. etc.” The case basically came down to two issues- how biased the judge was and how much the city was justified in its exercise of eminent domain.

We were there, I should add, in particular, because Julie, one of Tay’s best friends, was one of the four tri-wizard champions, err, contenders, arguing, and she was heavily favored.

The judges in this case were actual real judges, one of them from the US court of appeals. They were flanked by two actual armed police officers. There was the cry of “Oyez oyez oyez” and the play got started.
The first round of arguments were really entertaining, and I thought Julie did a great job. There was a short recess and then the second pair of students came up to argue their points. I did actually spend most of that round playing Angry Birds Star Wars on my tablet.

The final announcement was made, Julie was robbed, and everyone filed out to take advantage of the really terrible buffet outside the moot courtroom.