CSULB Team Wins The Texas State Undergraduate Moot Court Championship

Political Science majors Yasmin Manners and Ryan Chapman won the Texas State Undergraduate Moot Court Championship Tournament recently held at the University of North Texas in Denton,Texas. Manners and Chapman defeated a team from the University of North Texas in the finals to claim the championship. In all, a total of 28 two-person teams from 11 schools participated in the competition. Manners and Chapman received $500 for their first-place finish, and Manners placed third in the orator competition. In addition, Andrew Kemper, Robert Lane, Wyatt Lyles, and Kari Rice (Carroll College, Montana) competed for CSULB.

Moot Court is a simulation of an appellate court proceeding. Two-person legal teams argue a hypothetical legal case known as “the competition case” in front of judges who grade the students on the basis of their knowledge of the case, response to questioning, forensic skills, and demeanor. Students must engage in thorough research of the cases and laws cited in “the competition case.” Teams from colleges and universities throughout the nation argue the same case. Oral argument lasts 40 minutes with each side getting 20 minutes. Each student is expected to speak for a minimum of seven minutes.

The hypothetical case used at the Texas State Undergraduate Moot Court Championship Tournament was the same as throughout the year. It asked: a) Whether the federal government’s issuance of an administrative subpoena requiring a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) to turn over the content of a subscriber’s chat room dialogue violated the Fourth Amendment; and b) Whether the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protected the petitioner’s facilitation of a chat room in which conversations allegedly threatened the president.