scotus
Today I went to watch the final round of competition for a moot court program at school. My con law lecture was canceled because of it and it seemed like most of the school went to watch. The attraction was that the panel of judges included some pretty big names, the biggest being Justice Alito from the supreme court. I guess that is a sort of dorky celebrity sighting, but I was excited about it. The way the event works is that each student gets up with a 15 min speech planned out, says the first sentence, and then is barraged with questions for the rest of the time and doesn't get to another word of their speech. These judges were particularly smart and had particularly good/difficult questions, and I was impressed by how well the students were able to keep their composure. Lot's of fun.
posted by james at Wednesday, April 11, 2007
4 Comments:
"moot" is a funny word. what's the origin?
huh, that's interesting. I had always thought of moot as being used as an adjective here, describing the court as "having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic," because the court was discussing just a hypothetical case. but that use only dates back to 1807, according to the oxford english dictionary. since 1425 it has been used as "An encounter; a meeting of two persons or parties, esp. a hostile one" and since 1225, "Argument, disputation; discussion, talking," and since 1512 has been used specifically in the context of law students arguing hypothetical cases. so i guess i was wrong.
Oh! Perfect time for a friends reference:
Joey - "Rach, the question is, does he like you? Because if he doesn't like you, this is all just a a moo point"
Rachel - "Hmm.. a moo point?"
Joey - "Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter. It's moo"
interesting
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