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High school students from seven U.S. cities put their powers of persuasion to the ultimate test in the inaugural national competition of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project.
Arguing a First Amendment case before constitutional scholars and prominent attorneys, high-school students from Baton Rouge La., Boston Mass., Camden, N.J., Louisville, Ky., Philadelphia, Phoenix, Ariz. and Washington, D.C. got a firsthand experience of appellate advocacy.
"This competition helped me realize that practicing law is something I should really do," said Ambra Jordan, of Phoenix, who was named Best Oral Advocate from a field of 66 students on March 21. "There's no stopping me now."
Jordan, 18, said her interest in the law began when she was in the third grade and her mother was in prison. That interest only intensified when her brother was shot and killed in 2007.
"I'm interested in many other things, but considering the details of my home life and the things I've had to overcome, I know that I can help a lot of people by doing what I'm good at-arguing for a cause," Jordan said in a letter expressing gratitude to the Brook J. Lenfest Foundation for sponsoring the competition.
Kaycee Flore, a senior majoring in theater at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, made it to the semifinal round. Competing in the moot court competition inspired her to pursue a career in law.
"I'm focused now," she told the Philadelphia Daily News, adding that she will major in political science at Chestnut Hill College next year.
The competition, like the classes on law and the constitution taught in urban high schools by law students as part of the Marshall-Brennan project, pushes to think differently about themselves, the legal system and the means to resolve conflicts, said Gwen Roseman Stern, an associate teaching professor at Earle Mack School of Law who directs the Trial Advocacy program as well as the Marshall-Brennan Project.
The experience of competition finalist Jose Tavarez of Camden, illustrated that point, since the process required him to argue the position of a school board, opposing a student organization.
"I really didn't want to," Tavarez told The Courier Post of Cherry Hill, N.J. "I always like fighting for the smaller people."
Stern said interest in the Marshall-Brennan Project is surging among students at Earle Mack School of Law, which will once again host the national competition in 2010.
Click Here to view a video recap of the National Moot Court Competition
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