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PRESS RELEASE
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Chicago-Kent College of Law wins 17th annual National Health Law Moot Court Competition
CHICAGO–November 13, 2008--Third-year Chicago-Kent students Sarah Buck and Casandra Rdzak are the winners of the 17th annual National Health Law Moot Court Competition held November 7 and 8 at Southern Illinois University (SIU) School of Law in Carbondale.
Chicago-Kent students Casandra Rdzak '09 (left) and Sarah Buck '09, winners of the 17th annual National Health Law Moot Court Competition
The competition, the only one in the nation devoted to health law, is co-sponsored by SIU’s Center for Health Law and Policy, the SIU School of Medicine’s Department of Medical Humanities, the American College of Legal Medicine, and the American College of Legal Medicine Foundation. Thirty-four teams from 25 law schools competed over two days. This is the second time that a team from Chicago-Kent has won the championship. (The law school last won the national title in 1995.)
The students argued a hypothetical case before the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue was the constitutionality of a state statute that created a process for a small rural hospital to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from a 72-year-old patient against the wishes of the patient and his family.
Chicago-Kent defeated teams from the University of Louisville and St. Louis University in the preliminary rounds. In the octofinals, Buck and Rdzak beat a strong team from South Texas College of Law, the defending champions. Chicago-Kent went on to defeat the University of Pittsburgh in the quarterfinals, Loyola University Chicago School of Law in the semifinals, and Northeastern University School of Law in the finals to win the competition.
Winning team member Casandra Rdzak is a native of Romania who came to the United States in 2002. Rdzak earned a bachelor of arts in Romanian Legal Studies in 2001 from Dimitrie Cantemir University College of Law in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In the spring of 2008, she served as a judicial extern for Judge Martin C. Ashman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Last summer she was a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP, where she will work as an associate in the Labor and Employment group after graduation in May 2009.
Teammate Sarah Buck earned her undergraduate degree in 1999 from Valparaiso University with a double major in French and economics. Prior to law school, Buck worked for Hewitt Associates as a lead business analyst. In the summer of 2008, she completed a judicial externship in the Immigration Court’s Executive Office of Immigration Review. The previous summer, Buck served as a judicial extern for Cook County Circuit Court judge Lee Preston.
The final round of the National Health Law Moot Court Competition was judged by a prestigious panel that included Michael P. McCuskey, chief judge, U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois; Ronald A. Guzman, district judge, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; Thaddeus M. Pope, associate professor and member of the Health Law Institute at Widener University School of Law; and Michael Raskin, president of the American College of Legal Medicine.
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