Earlier this month, more than 100 college students from across the country gathered in Orlando to compete in the South Atlantic Regional Undergraduate Moot Court Qualifying Tournament hosted by UCF\u2019s Department of Legal Studies.<\/p>\n
The Dec. 2-3 tournament gave students a chance to present oral arguments in favor of their position in a hypothetical or \u201cmoot\u201d case in front of volunteer judges. Among the judges was the dean of Florida International University\u2019s law school and a local circuit court judge.<\/p>\n
The tournament was one of just eight regional tournaments of its kind in the nation. It also was a resounding success, said department Chair Jim Beckman.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral members of the American Collegiate Moot Court Association [the governing body for the tournaments] said it was one of the best-run tournaments this year,\u201d Beckman shared. \u201cThat\u2019s especially satisfying to hear since it was our first time hosting the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ACMC named UCF a permanent host of the annual South Atlantic regional tournament this summer.<\/p>\n
Contributing to the success of this year\u2019s tournament was the overall quality of the teams in the competition. The U.S. Air Force Academy\u2019s team included a recently selected Rhodes Scholar and a recently selected Fulbright Scholar. Another team, from Patrick Henry College, comprised students who won first and third place as orators in the 2010 national competition.<\/p>\n
Also competing were three teams of UCF students who did \u201cvery well\u201d in their first moot court tournament, Beckman reported.<\/p>\n
One UCF team, Yisell Rodriquez and Lizette Santiago, came in 24th out of 50 teams on day one and narrowly lost in the first elimination round on day two.<\/p>\n
Another team, Siiri Raniero and Cameron Marsh, placed 26th out of 50 teams on the first day. \u201cWhat makes their ranking so impressive is that English is Siiri\u2019s second language. Their hard work and training over several months enabled them to place higher than almost half of the other teams in a very competitive field,\u201d Beckman said proudly.<\/p>\n
The final round of the tournament pitted Patrick Henry\u2019s team of stellar orators against a team from the University of Louisville. The volunteer judges, most of whom are Central Florida attorneys, ultimately selected the Patrick Henry team of Blake Meadows and Bridget Degnan as the winner of the overall competition (watch the final round and presentation of top awards at http:\/\/ce.ucf.edu\/conference-services\/mootcourt\/).<\/p>\n
The top 20 percent of teams from each regional competition go on to compete in the ACMC\u2019s national competition next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quality of the teams \u2014 and the time and expertise offered by our own faculty and the Orlando legal community \u2014 made the tournament simply superb,\u201d Beckman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, more than 100 college students from across the country gathered in Orlando to compete in the South Atlantic Regional Undergraduate Moot Court Qualifying Tournament hosted by UCF\u2019s Department of Legal Studies. The Dec. 2-3 tournament gave students a chance to present oral arguments in favor of their position in a hypothetical or \u201cmoot\u201d case in front of…","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":31576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2805,6595],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-31575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","tag-legal-studies","tag-moot-court"],"yoast_head":"\n