Second-year law students Joshua Cook and Emma Savage Fowler have won the University of Tennessee College of Law’s 2022 Advocates’ Prize competition.
The annual event, hosted by the College of Law’s Moot Court Board, offers an opportunity for law students to enhance their skills in brief writing and appellate advocacy. Those who advance to the final round demonstrate their skills in front of a panel of federal judges.
At this year’s event the teams addressed two constitutional issues in the mock case of Powell et al. v. Munson drafted by third-year law student and event chairperson Molly Green-Majewski.
The problem requested that the Supreme Court decide whether the respondent stated a claim for relief under the Fourteenth Amendment based upon his assignment to solitary confinement following his death sentence and whether the respondent stated a claim for relief under the Eighth Amendment based on the conditions and length of his solitary confinement in a state prison.
In the final round of competition, Kyle Mangrum and Luke Norton represented the petitioners while Cook and Fowler represented the respondents.
Judge Susan Carney of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit; U.S. Magistrate Judge Jill McCook of the Eastern District of Tennessee; and Judge John Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, presided.
Fowler won the Spenser Powell Best Advocate award while Mangrum and Norton were awarded honors for the best brief. Lily-Ana Fairweather and Jacob Misenhimer received recognition for the second-best brief.
Other students who participated as advocates in the competition include Brady Diaz-Barriga, Charles Highland, London Lacoste, Adam McDonald, Ryan M. McElhose, Bianca McNeary, Alec Rains, Jackson Rouse, Bethany Wilson and Ford Yates.
Students Travis Dukes, Carolina Hughes, Joshua Rojas, Georgia Seay, Reagan Stanfill and Evan Turner served as bailiffs.