Trigger warning: This article discusses a moot court case that includes references to suicide
“Chief Justice, Your Honors, and may it please the Court.”
Just like a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States, oral arguments in moot court begin with these words.
Moot court is a forensics activity that simulates appellate law by presenting a fictional case to students, who advocate for either side of the case in oral arguments. While these arguments are prepared ahead of time, judges can interrupt at any point, and students must respond to questions by using both legal reasoning and previous real Supreme Court cases. Students present their case in teams of two, with each student arguing one of the amendments being challenged.
Moot court clubs often attract students interested in going to law school, as they simulate the motions of legal proceedings. President of Macalester Moot Court Riley Hodin ’25 is one of those students.
“Legal research and writing are going to be really important skills [in law school], and it also helps to clarify that it’s something that I am interested in,” Hodin said.
For Sayuri Cumaranatunge ’27*, moot court teaches skills that are applicable in areas other than law.
“I’m not sure if I want to go to law school,” Cumaranatunge said. “In the context of how many forensics events there are, moot court is one of the ones that is the most generally applicable for the skills that you’re learning. It’s very close to what most public speaking is.”
“[Moot court has] helped me a lot with interviews because you’re getting shot down with questions so many times, you have to really answer the question and get to the heart of it. So I feel like it’s helped me improve as a speaker,” Laila Reja ’27, Cumaranatunge’s Moot Court partner, said.
This year’s moot court case was about a fictional person named William DeNolf who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after repeatedly encouraging his girlfriend to commit suicide via text, according to Hodin. The conviction was appealed on the grounds of his First and Fifth Amendment rights being violated.
“Can he be convicted of involuntary manslaughter based only on his speech, or does the right to free speech protect him from that conviction?” Cumaranatunge said about the First Amendment issue in question.
The Fifth Amendment, on the other hand, protects individuals from self-incrimination.
“While the investigators were investigating him, he was asleep. They used [biometrics on] his phone to open it up and find the texts,” Reja said. “Does that infringe on the Fifth Amendment?”
These are complicated issues, requiring students to have a deep understanding of the law and how past cases interact to be successful and win the case. Professor of Political Science Patrick Schmidt, the Moot Court coach, helps students put together nuanced lines of reasoning.
“I’m a sounding board for the arguments that competitors have to construct, because I’ve spent decades reading constitutional law and knowing what ‘makes sense’ and what doesn’t work. In the same way, as a coach, I try to help everyone become a better speaker, one tip at a time,” Schmidt wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly.
Despite the challenge that moot court offers, Cumaranatunge and Reja finished 17th out of over 500 teams in the nation this year, marking Macalester Moot Court’s best finish in its five years of existence.
“It’s an honor for Sayuri [Cumaranatunge] and Laila [Reja] to represent Macalester at our first national championship appearance, and this accomplishment illustrates their dedication, polish and rhetorical prowess,” Director of Forensics Beau Larsen wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly.
Hodin echoed this sentiment, saying: “Sayuri [Cumaranatunge] really came into her own this year as a leader on the team. She’s always been an incredible competitor. But this year, she really led her teammates in a way that was really impressive. Laila [Reja] is just a natural. It was her first year doing moot court, and we were all just incredibly impressed with how quickly she picked it up.”.
But like any extracurricular activity, moot court is not all serious. Community is a key part of moot court — a belief expressed by both Larson and the students. On the way to Chicago to compete at a tournament in November, the Moot Court team introduced Schmidt to Kendrick Lamar’s newly released album, “GNX.”
“It was chaotic,” Hodin said, laughing about the van singing “tv off.”
At that tournament, two Macalester teams faced off in the final round to determine the winner, with Cumaranatunge and Reja coming out on top — perhaps as a sign of things to come for them later in the season.
“There may be no liberal arts colleges in the country that have the breadth and level of success in forensics that Macalester has.” Schmidt wrote. “We have a tradition of forensics at Macalester, but we’re in one of our best periods for strength across the board.”
*Cumaranatunge is the Puzzle Editor at The Mac Weekly
