Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Tue, 24 Feb 2015
Dave Thompson
This year continues to be a huge success for the moot court program at Liberty University School of Law, as one of the school’s teams took home a regional championship crown over the weekend.
The team of Zach Hurt, Justin Reddington, and Reed Marbury were named regional champions at the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, DC Regional. They will represent Liberty at the National Finals in Chicago, in April.
After losing its first round to Ohio State, the team won four rounds in a row to cement its place in the national competition.
Reddington, Hurt, and Marbury beat Loyola of Chicago in back-to-back rounds, then defeated the same team from Ohio State that beat them in the first round. Finally they beat Emory University to advance to nationals.
Hurt was named Tenth-Best Oralist in the region.
Liberty’s second team, Chris Collins, Nathan Hopkins, and Joshua Dawson also competed in the tournament. The team overcame a preliminary round score of 1-2 to advance to the elimination round, but there they lost to the other team from Loyola of Chicago.
In the preliminary rounds, they lost to the University of Alabama and American University, with their lone victory coming against Texas Southern. Hopkins and Collins won the oral argument ballot in all of their preliminary rounds. Collins was named Ninth-Best Oralist in the region.
Professors Scott Thompson and Timothy Todd accompanied the teams.
“I couldn’t be happier with their performance,” Thompson said.
“Even in the rounds that we lost, the teams were arguing at an extremely high level.”
This marks the sixth team that Liberty has advanced to the National Finals. Liberty previously made the national tournament in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Liberty has competed in five tournaments this year, where teams have finished first twice, second twice, earned two best brief awards, earned two best oralist and three other oralist awards, and advanced two other teams into the semi-final round.