Home
E-mail this article
Print
Select Text Size

School of Law news

Law students take first at national moot court competition
Former Saudi official presents 2007 diplomat's lecture

 

Law students take first at national moot court competition

Two third-year KU law students won the title at the 19th annual National Criminal Procedure Tournament held Oct. 18-20 in San Diego.

Luke P. Sinclair of Lawrence and Milwaukee, Wis., and David Clay Britton of Olathe competed among 41 teams from law schools throughout the United States at the event conducted by the University of San Diego School of Law Appellate Moot Court Board. Sinclair and Britton also won for best brief, and Britton was named second-place oralist out of 82 competitors.

Although KU students have won first-place awards in other moot court competitions, this is the first time a KU team has won the National Criminal Procedure Tournament.


Jean Phillips, associate clinical professor of law, advised Britton and Sinclair in preparing their entries and accompanied them to the competition. Their preparation included working on brief-writing skills and spending many hours in oral-argument practice rounds.

The three-day event concluded with the selection of the top 10 teams overall, the top 10 briefs and the top 10 individual oralists. Moot court competitions test law students’ skill and agility in arguing legal issues that reflect real-world situations. For this competition, students reviewed a hypothetical case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding appeals by a prisoner convicted in a gang stabbing of an inmate. Competitors were asked if the prisoner’s Sixth Amendment rights were violated when a fellow inmate’s statement was admitted at trial and whether the prisoner’s Miranda rights had been violated when his own incriminating statements obtained during interrogation were admitted at trial.

The students received details of the case Aug. 15 and submitted briefs by Sept. 21. The competition was narrowed to 16 quarterfinal teams in the first two compulsory rounds based on a combination of oral and brief scores. The rounds continued to eliminate teams based on the same score combination until the final round.

Two California Court of Appeals judges and a University of San Diego law professor judged the final round.

The winning KU team members are listed below by their hometowns.

DOUGLAS COUNTY
Luke P. Sinclair is married to Lori Sinclair. He is the son of Paul and Lisa Sinclair of Milwaukee. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003 and is a graduate of Heritage Christian High School in Milwaukee.

JOHNSON COUNTY
David Clay Britton is the son of David and Thea Britton. He earned a bachelor’s in history and political science from KU in 2004 and is a graduate of Olathe East High School.

 

Former Saudi official presents 2007 diplomat's lecture

Dr. Fawaz Al-Alamy, Saudi Arabia’s Former Deputy Minister of Commerce and Industry and Chief Technical Negotiator for the WTO Accession, presented the 2007 Diplomat’s Forum lecture, titled “How Saudi Arabia Aims to Achieve Modernity While Preserving Valuable Traditions,” on Nov. 8.

The talk focused on economic reforms and restructuring strategies, energy policies and future prospects, and the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and future of the Multilateral Trading System. As the Chief Technical Negotiator for the Kingdom, Dr. Al-Alamy was principally responsible for the accession of Saudi Arabia to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which occurred on Dec. 11, 2005, after 12 years of difficult negotiations.

The Diplomat’s Forum is an annual event sponsored by the KU School of Law. The Forum provides a platform for an open sharing of thoughts on international law and relations, and the United States, through the unique perspective of an insightful professional with notable diplomatic experience in the service of a foreign government.

Visit the School of Law Web site for more information.