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PRESS RELEASE
For more information, please contact: Gwen Osborne, director of public affairs, (312) 906-5251
Chicago-Kent takes first place in Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition
Chicago-Kent teams win overall competition and best brief awards
CHICAGO–April 2, 2009--For the second consecutive year, Chicago-Kent College of Law is the winner of the Evan A. Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition. Chicago-Kent teams also won awards for the best respondent’s and petitioner’s briefs.
Second-year students Jocelyn Floyd (left) and Marni Zaideman won the 2009 Evan A. Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition as well as the tournament's Best Respondent's Brief Award
Second-year Chicago-Kent students Jocelyn Floyd and Marni Zaideman successfully defended the law school’s championship and won the tournament’s Best Respondent’s Brief Award at the competition, held March 27 to 29 at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. Second-year students Michael Elliott and Amanda Schackart, members of a second Chicago-Kent team, advanced to the quarterfinal round of the competition and won the Best Petitioner’s Brief Award.
Forty law school teams from many of the top moot court programs in the country participated in the tournament, which is named for Judge Evan A. Evans, an 1899 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1916 to 1948. During his years of private practice, Judge Evans was noted for both his brief-writing and his outstanding oral advocacy.
Competitors argued a case in which high school students challenged the constitutionality of school officials’ attempts to regulate their Internet speech by shutting down a Web site created off-campus. The case also included a challenge to a search of a student on school grounds as a violation of the student’s Fourth Amendment rights.
After three strong preliminary round arguments, the winning Chicago-Kent team defeated squads from New York University in the round of sixteen, University of California Hastings in the quarterfinals, and the John Marshall Law School in the semifinals. With an excellent argument in the final round before an elite panel of judges at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Chicago-Kent prevailed over a team from South Texas College of Law.
Winning team member Jocelyn Floyd, a second-year student, is a graduate of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, with a double major in English and French language and literature. Teammate Marni Zaideman earned her undergraduate degree in finance from DePaul University. The championship team was coached by third-year students Ted Koshiol and Jessica Tyrus, who won the competition in 2008.
Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. Chicago-Kent’s advocacy programs have a tradition of excellence. Chicago-Kent is the only law school ever to win the National Trial Competition and the National Moot Court Competition in the same year (2008), and the first school in more than 30 years to win the National Moot Court Competition in two consecutive years (2008 and 2009). This year, Chicago-Kent's Moot Court Honor Society teams have earned eight final-round placements in national and regional competitions and won five titles.
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