On November 4th and 5th, six Benedictine University students participated in the American Moot Court Association Regional Competition held at the University of Chicago. For this competition, students spent several months preparing constitutional arguments based on a hypothetical Fourth and Eighth Amendment case to be presented to a panel of judges, much like oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court. At the competition, the two-person attorney teams competed against several other universities including Yale, the University of Chicago, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Macalister College. One of our teams, with members Arline Vargas and Halie Ryan, progressed on to the semi-finals, earning them a spot in the “Sweet Sixteen”. Another Benedictine student, Mariya Khan won a top orator award as she garnered enough points to place her as the ninth best attorney out of all the competition’s 64 participants.  The full list of Benedictine student-participants is as follows: Arline Vargas, Halie Ryan, Cachet Grady, Mariya Khan, Emma Harbison, and Amna Khan. The other members of the BenU team who did not compete, but attended the competition to cheer their colleagues on are: Devery Hodge, Jacob Gorgey, Vanessa Verzillo, Sabrina Bitre, and Ryan Robinson.

Read more about the American Moot Court Association