DENTON (UNT), Texas — Four University of North Texas Moot Court students have qualified for the national American Collegiate Moot Court Association tournament, which will be held Jan. 18-21 at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif. Two additional students qualified as alternates.

Emily Ownby, senior political science major from Plano, and Allie Hallmark, senior political science major from Midland, were selected for the national tournament by winning, by unanimous decision, the Texas Tech University School of Law Moot Court Tournament, which was the qualifying tournament of Southwest Region of the AUMCA. Rebekah Kopsky, a senior political science major from Cleburne, and Shelby Henderson, a freshman political science major from Carpentersville, Ill., advanced to the quarterfinals of the Texas Tech tournament and also qualified for the national tournament.

Sixty-four teams — the top 25 percent of teams from each of the AUMCA’s six regions — are selected for the national tournament. The Southwest Region, the second largest of the regions, will send 11 teams.   

The UNT team of Rodney Bernal, junior political science major from Alma, Texas, and Laura Lewis, senior political science major from New Orleans, were named alternates to the national tournament and will be eligible for at-large bid as participants after the final qualifying tournament, the Western Region tournament that will be held in December at California State University at Long Beach.

The ACMCA and its state associations, including the Texas Undergraduate Moot Court Association, were founded to advance the legal and analytical skills of undergraduate college students who plan to attend law school. During a moot court, a simulation of an appellate court’s proceedings, teams of two students examine a legal problem and present arguments for both sides of the case to a group of appellate judges. The judges review the students’ arguments and ask them questions about the case.

All teams in the national and state Moot Court tournaments are arguing the fictional case of Andrea “Andy” Sommerville v. Olympus State University, William DeNolf as President of Olympus State University. The case focuses on a student who was dismissed from a student ambassadorial position with the university president’s office after she opposed the university’s new policy of limiting student protests to certain areas of the campus. The student believed all students should have the right to express themselves without limits.

Kopsky said the case addresses the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the free speech clause in the First Amendment. Each Moot Court team member, she said, addresses one clause on both the petitioner and the respondent sides of the case.

“The challenge in arguing both sides during a competition is the fact that you have minutes to change your perspective and advocate for the side you were just contesting,” she said. “While preparing the arguments before a tournament, you must create a theory of the case and apply case law to support it, knowing that opposing teams are likely to differentiate the same case law to argue that it is not applicable. It is the challenge of constructing the argument, then competing before law professors and respected legal professionals, that makes Moot Court meaningful and rewarding.”

At the Texas Tech tournament, UNT students defeated teams from 14 universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and Texas Tech. A team of UNT students also won the Texas Tech tournament in 2007, 2006, 2004 and 2003.

In October, Ownby and Hallmark also placed first in the Texas Wesleyan School of Law tournament, which was sanctioned by the Texas Undergraduate Moot Court Association. It was the fourth year in a row that UNT students won that particular tournament.

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