Law students argue for top rank in Keedy Cup competition

There was courtroom drama, riveting testimony and an onslaught of interrogation from the judges. But it wasn't another installment in the just-ended murder trial of Thomas Capano, the Delaware attorney convicted of murdering one of his several mistresses, or President Clinton's current impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. The event was the Edwin Keedy Cup, the annual culmination of the Law School's moot court tournament. The Keedy Cup was completed last Thursday in front of a near-capacity crowd at the University Museum's Harrison Auditorium. The competition gives four third-year law students who earned the highest scores in the two previous rounds of mock trial competition an opportunity to argue a pending Supreme Court case in front of three respected judges. Preparation began last year during the participants' second year of law school and involved months of research and practice. What began as a field of 81 competitors was tapered down to the final four, with the runners-up comprising the Moot Court Board, which organizes the competition. This year, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Deborah Poritz and Court of Appeals judges Samuel Alito and Wallace Tashima were invited to preside over the case of City of Chicago v. Morales, which challenged whether states can constitutionally prohibit street gang members from associating in public. In the final, Andrea Ortbals and Law School Professor David Rudovsky -- who replaced a student unable to attend due to a family emergency -- argued on the side of the city. The pair used the argument that it is not unconstitutional to disperse groups from the streets unless they are clearly gang-related. Mala Ahuja and Thomas Wallerstein, representing the respondent, stressed that unless a group of people is determined to be loitering without an apparent purpose, they have a fundamental right to be on the street. After over an hour of intense arguments, interspersed with questions and comments from the judges, the pair of Ahuja and Wallerstein were named best team while best individual performance honors went to Ortbals. Ortbals did not think that the absence of her partner, William Sieck, hurt her team's performance. "Emotionally, I would have liked him to be here," she said. "[But] his work on the brief was excellent and carried our team to an equal presence in the competition." While the competition had its light moments, it was viewed by the judges and participants as preparation for actual trial situations. The hours of stress and preparation put into the competition seemed to pay off, as Portitz judged the students' arguments as "better than the presentation before the [Illinois] Supreme Court." And Alito deemed the participants "ready to go out and practice law."