Three College of Law students have advanced through the regional rounds of the National Moot Court Competition and will represent the University of Tennessee at the national level in January.
Second-year student Luke Norton and third-year students Miles Schiller and Julia Slagle represented the College of Law to win at the Region 7 level for the third consecutive year. For the second consecutive year, Schiller was named the outstanding oral advocate in the championship round. The team is coached by emeriti professors Don Leatherman and John Sobieski.
“Both of my coaches worked tirelessly preparing us for the regionals, organizing practices and recruiting members of the law community and professors at our school to judge our arguments,” Schiller said, and “without them, and the fierce preparation and performance of Luke and Julia, we would not have been able to qualify for the final round, and I certainly would not have been named outstanding advocate.”
The students averaged 15 hours per week preparing to compete and practicing oral arguments, Schiller said. They were given a scenario in advance that challenged section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects interactive computer service providers acting in the traditional role as a publisher from liability. The students had to decide whether an online community for investors could invoke the defense when an automated artificially intelligent bot adds commentary to a report panning a public traded company.
The students also had to weigh whether the “Reporter’s Shield” privilege could be asserted by the author of the critical report. The author was also a short seller of the company’s stock at the time the report was published.
At the regional level, Norton, Schiller and Slagle were matched against students representing Tulane University, Loyola University New Orleans, the University of Mississippi and Louisiana State University.
The team’s success at the regional competition allows them to advance the national finals that will be held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from Jan. 30 through Feb. 2.
As for their chances at the next level, Schiller is optimistic.
“Nobody is going to have outworked us, and we have two of the best coaches in the nation behind us,” he said. “I believe we have just as good of a shot as any other team.”