Moot Court heads into new season ranked No. 4 in the country

Liberty University’s Moot Court team under the Helms School of Government aims to carry its success from last season into the 2023-24 campaign.

The squad finished the regular season by qualifying a program-best six teams to the American Moot Court Association (AMCA) National Tournament. That success was reflected in this year’s preseason rankings, in which the team rose from 12th to fourth overall in the country. The team is ranked at No. 4 for oral advocacy (up from 13th last season) and No. 9 in brief writing (up from 15th).

“First and foremost, it gives the students a nice boost going into the year knowing that what they did last year really worked and the end goal was reaching to get back up into the Top 5,” said Moot Court Coach Dr. Ben Rathsam, Assistant Professor of Pre-Law and Government.

Liberty currently trails No.1 Patrick Henry College, No. 2 University of Chicago, and No. 3 UT Dallas in the preseason rankings, with No. 5 University of California, Santa Barbara rounding out the Top 5.

Liberty will kick off the season by hosting a regional tournament Oct. 27-28, before competing in several others to qualify for the super regionals in January. This season, due to changes in AMCA rules that include the addition of super regionals, universities can only qualify four teams for nationals, which will take place Feb. 9-10 at Texas Tech University School of Law in Lubbock, Texas.

Students began working on their cases over the summer to prepare for competition.

“The two legal issues for this year are a 14th Amendment Due Process issue and a 1st Amendment Free Exercise of Religion issue,” Rathsam said. “Engulfed within those legal issues are whether the landmark Supreme Court cases of Griswold v. Connecticut as well as Employment Division v. Smith should be overturned by the Supreme Court.”

This season will feature several Liberty teams who will look to continue their success in the 2022-23 season. Seniors Cameron Vis and Sophia Ekstrom finished the year with a regional championship victory as well as a Top 32 placement at Nationals. Emma Scharstein and Tori Hu had an impressive Top 16 showing at Nationals. Also, Senior Colton Hughes is looking to qualify for Nationals for the fourth time in his four years with the Moot Court program.

“We are trying to focus on having arguments drafted earlier this year,” Rathsam said. “I think we’re seeing a lot more students kick things into higher gear a little bit earlier, which I think will help us in the long run because the quicker students can stand up for arguing, the quicker we can move past the learning part of it and into polishing it to get the soft skills down and sound confident in the argument.”

Students interested in joining the Moot Court team can email brathsam@liberty.edu or visit the squad’s Instagram page.