Ellie Kahn
Contributing Writer
Continuing their incredibly successful season, 10 students from the Moot Court team at The College of Wooster traveled to Dallas to compete at the 2018 National Tournament. The competition took place on Jan. 19 and 20 at the University of Northern Texas Law School. More than 30 students are involved in the Moot Court team on campus, which is coached by political science professor Désirée Weber and administered by philosophy department chair John Rudisill. As Rudisill further explains, “Moot Court is simulated appellate court advocacy, or simulated argument to the supreme court of the United States. A fictional case problem is designed each year and, as a part of the fiction, the case has been decided in a lower court and then elevated to the Supreme Court on appeal.”
Students in teams of two, referred to as “counselors,” then present each side of the case while responding to the questions of their judges and opponents. Cami Steckbeck ’19, one of the students who went to the Nationals competition, emphasized that “Moot Court [ultimately] promotes research skills, public speaking, legal writing skills and an understanding of the U.S. Constitution and American legal system.” Steckbeck and her partner Jordan Griffith ’19 have been participating in Moot Court since their first year at the College, and did particularly well at the competition.
In order to qualify for Nationals, the students had to prepare for and attend various regional competitions, and place roughly in the top 20 percent of those competing. After a particularly strong season, Wooster was able to send five teams who had qualified, including Steckbeck and Griffith; the four other teams were composed of Shelley Grostefon ’18 and Coral Ciupak ’19; Maha Rashid ’19 and Heather Hartmann ’21; Tolly Colby ’20 and Oria Daugherty ’21; and Brianna Schmidt ’20 and Dawson Honey ’19.
According to Rudisill, “All of our students performed exceptionally well [at Nationals]. The more experienced teams, for the most part and unsurprisingly, advanced further than the less experienced Wooster teams. But even our first time Nationals qualifiers scored very highly in their day one rounds.”
Two teams, comprised of Steckbeck and Griffith as well as Grostefon and Ciupak, were able to advance to the second day of the competition, an impressive feat considering they were arguing against members from the top 20 teams in the country. Steckbeck and Griffith ended up placing third out of the 84 teams in the competition.
“I watched each round these two partnerships argued in and, in each case, they were at the very top of their game. Indeed, Steckbeck and Griffith got stronger and stronger as the day went on, only losing in the semi-finals with a 3-2 split judge panel that I felt strongly should have gone the other way,” said Rudisill of the team.
As Griffith concluded on the success he and Steckbeck experienced at the Nationals competition, he emphasized the role that the team played throughout the season, saying that “the Moot Court team here at the College is fantastic, and we all work with each other to make sure we’re as prepared as possible going into our competitions. Cami’s and my successes this season would have not been possible without the support of the other members of the Moot Court team, the great coaches and the attorneys who dedicated their Wednesday evenings to making our arguments better.”