DBHS MOCK TRIAL COMPETES IN NATIONAL MOOT COURT
March 8 & 9, 6 members of the DBHS Mock Trial team competed at a National Moot Court Competition through UCSD, that was held virtually. So, six Brahmas and two coaches spent all day Saturday and part of Sunday at exotic DBHS😉
The students competed in two-person teams. The teams were:
Zao Han (11) with Sammi Zheng (11)
Audrey Chang (11) with Michelle Li (11)
Arvind Anwar (9) with Aditi Chawla (10)
BIG NEWS FIRST: Arvind and Aditi made it to the top 8 and have qualified to compete at “Nationals” which will be held virtually at the end of April.
If you read my email from two weeks ago when 10 students went to the Univ of Georgia to compete in person, this was exactly the same general procedure and case (minus the travel)
The students competed in three rounds Saturday then only the top 16 teams went on to compete on Sunday. Arvind and Aditi won the “ballot” of EVERY judge on Saturday (three rounds, 6 judges, so 6 ballots all had Aditi/Arvind defeating their opponents) which left them ranked third going into Sunday. The top 16 round for Aditi and Arvind was CLOSE but they won! We knew the top 8 was going to be tight when I recognized the competitors as two students that we competed against last year at UCSB (and who took first place last year at UCSB). Arvind and Aditi were spectacular. They fielded brutally tough questions almost the entirety of their presentations. Coincidently, one of the scorers (meant to be playing the parts of Supreme Court Justices) was Courtney Chan, DBHS alum from 2019 and current UCSD Law School student (because the teams have no school names only team #’s she was allowed to score along with two other individuals).
Moot Court is meant to represent an appellant argument being made in front of the Supreme Court. There are two fictitious issues and each member of the team is responsible for one of them (names listed first above were Issue I). Students must research and learn about 10 Supreme Court cases and use them to write their own 10 minute argument…both FOR and AGAINST the issue. If the two-person team is petitioner in a round, they must also, on the fly, write and present a two minute rebuttal based on respondents arguments for BOTH issues.
If you know Sammi, you know that this is WAY out of her comfort zone, much the same for Audrey and Zao. That’s just how brave they are! Michelle learned the cases so well she was often teaching it to the others. Aditi and Arvind are both on the road to being truly exceptional speakers.