Moot Court

A moot court is a simulation of a court that law students partake in, in front of justices whose job is to interrupt the counselor presenting their argument with questions. On this occasion, I was one of the four counselors presenting our case to a court of nine justices who were my peers. Our case was Mahanoy v. B.L. The rest of our classmates watched, it was a big audience of 65 students. The process of the moot court derived from us students learning our cases. We then were given a side to argue and were to use one amendment for our case. In our team's case, we used the First Amendment--which is the freedom of religion and expression. Our team had to divide the arguments using the First Amendment-- and I chose to argue the different forms of free speech this amendment protects, as well as speech not protected by the First Amendment. We used a document in which we researched the facts of our case, different precedent cases, words from the amendment, and the historical meaning of the First Amendment. Lastly, we set up our individual arguments. The process was long and challenging, but fun nonetheless. For my side, I used the argument that the student in our case was punished in violation of her First Amendment freedom of pure speech rights. The case was of a school that wrongfully punished one of their students for posting on their private social media platform a form of expressive speech. The school was not immediately interrupted in the moment of her post, since she posted it on a weekend and not on school grounds. I argued for my case with all I could. Moreover, I used a precedent case-- which is a case that was already decided on and is used to decide other cases. I used the decision and situation of the precedent case to argue how my case is different in every way and should be decided differently-- which is that the student's punishment by the school is in violation of her First Amendment pure speech rights. It was also argued that times change and the amendments were written to develop as society does. I ended my argument by stating that our case is meant to reinforce students' First Amendment rights, not encourage bad behavior. In the end, I practiced my argument for hours until I perfected my emphasis on the words I wanted. In the moments before it was my turn to argue, I felt a passion to represent our case. Hearing the other side state their facts and opinions, I felt reassurance knowing I prepared myself to counter many of their claims. As soon as I stepped up to the podium, I felt confident in myself, I gave it my all and delivered a great argument. I answered every question the justices threw at me, and felt great with the results.