Judges applaud finalists, name champion
By Lori Craig
Each of the four finalists in the 65th Annual Hale Moot Court Honors Competition gave a “fabulous” performance before judges, peers, faculty, and friends and family. So fabulous, in fact, that Ninth Circuit Court Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt said he regretted that 2Ls Janille Chambers-Corbett, Harper Gernet-Girard, Ashton Massey and Andy Tran couldn’t all “be No. 1, because you all deserve it.”
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| Front row: Judges The Hon. Sheryl Gordon McCloud '84, The Hon. Stephen R. Reinhardt, and The Hon. Paul J. Watford. Back row: Harper Gernet-Girard, Ashton Massey, Dean Robert K. Rasmussen, Janille Chambers-Corbett, and Andy Tran |
Still, rising above the stiff competition was champion Chambers-Corbett, with Massey as runner-up.
Chambers-Corbett, arguing as respondents’ counsel, impressed Reinhardt and fellow judges Paul J. Watford, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Washington Supreme Court Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud ‘84, who offered her praise.
“You’re [the] respondent, you’ve got to listen, and it’s really a test of, were you in the conversation before you started [arguing]?” Gordon McCloud said. “Your command of the cases was exceptional. You were able to go back and forth with the justices tit-for-tat on all the cases.”
As Hale Moot Court champion, Chambers-Corbett will receive the Edward G. Lewis Champion Award, a cash prize endowed by Lewis, a 1970 USC Gould graduate who chaired the honors program as a student.
The other three finalists will receive Judge E. Avery Crary Awards, cash prizes in honor of a 1929 USC Gould graduate who served on both the Los Angeles Superior Court and the United States District Court and frequently judged the Hale Moot Court competition.
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| Janille Chambers-Corbett '15 argues |
Gordon McCloud commended each finalist individually and offered advice on what they might improve. She also praised topic editors Peter Mariluch ’14 and Aurora Thome ’14, two members of the 2013-14 Hale Moot Court Honors Program Executive Board who drafted the complex procedural history and facts of the case on which the competition centered.
“I thought it was a couple of professors who had collaborated on it because the issues … there were circuit splits, there were arguments on either side, there were factual issues to really grab onto, there were policy arguments, and really no procedural glitches like one often sees in a moot court argument,” Gordon McCloud said. “So … hat’s off, terrific job.”
USC Gould’s Hale Moot Court is a student-run honors program, founded in 1948, whose board is comprised of 3L students who participated in the program the previous year. The board invites all first-year students to compete in qualifying rounds each spring, and then offers 40 1Ls the opportunity to compete during their 2L year.
Board members create a competition case that involves two legal issues, and each participant drafts an appellate brief on behalf of either the petitioner or respondent. As participants move through the rounds of competition, their advocacy skills are tested; competitors who argued for one side during an early round must then take the other side during the next round.
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| Ashton Massey '15 argues |
“Being part of moot court really pushes our students to become skilled advocates as they go through multiple rounds of competition, taking questions from different judges on both sides of their issue. It is not easy to do that,” said Professor Rebecca Lonergan, who is the faculty advisor to the program.
The moot court finalists argued two issues: whether the District Court abused its discretion in denying a motion to compel a journalist to identify his confidential source; and whether the District Court correctly granted summary judgment for a police department, finding that a police officer who had probable cause to arrest a person could not be sued for retaliatory arrest, even if the officer’s true motive for making the arrest was anger about the person’s past criticism of racist police policies.
Learn more about the USC Gould Hale Moot Court Honors Program.
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