Hear ye, hear ye, the honorable Supreme Court of the United States is now in session!

With this exclamation, a panel of three law professors opened a moot court session on March 30 at Northwestern University Law School on 375 E. Chicago Ave in the Parrillo Courtroom–the matter at hand was the oral arguments of seven Parker students.

Students from the Civil Liberties and the American State course (known as “Civ Lib”)  took on the roles of petitioners (defined as the party who petitions the Supreme Court to review a case) and respondents (defined as the party being sued or tried—also known as the appellees) in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt. A moot court is an exercise where students argue positions in a simulated court to try to persuade mock judges to decide in their favor.

This case pits clinics in Texas providing reproductive health services, including abortion, against John Hellerstedt, the Commissioner of Texas Department of Health Services, who in 2014 aided Texas in passing the House Bill 2 (HB-2)—a bill that ordered that abortion providers that have admitting privileges at local hospitals meet the standards of outpatient surgical centers, among other requirements.  Intentionally or not, the passing of the bill led to the closing of 75 percent of abortion clinics in Texas.  

The students had participated in the same moot court case for their first semester final. In December of each year that Upper School History teacher Jeanne Barr has offered the course, she has chosen a case from the real Supreme Court docket for her students to argue in a moot court final. “I’ve always been proud of the fact that Civil Liberties is taking cases from the contemporary docket,” Barr said. “Every year the class is different.”

To prepare for their final, students received coaching from Juliet Sorensen, a Parker parent and Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Northwestern Law School’s Center for International Human Rights, among other Parker affiliated lawyers. Sorenson, who has been working with Barr’s Civ Lib class for four years, was so pleased with the work presented in the final that she invited the class to test their skills on an even bigger stage–at Northwestern Law School.

Seven of the fifteen students in the course accepted the challenge.  While the second moot court focused on the same case, students had to pull from a different set of facts to make their arguments. Representing Whole Woman’s Health on the petitioner side were seniors Sam Winick, Matt Fitzgibbon, and Elliot Lancry. Arguing on the respondent side were seniors Rachel Hartman, Alina Ekbal, Isaac Burns, and Nik Dhingra.

This time students were no longer presenting to a panel of their peers, but rather had to make their arguments in front of three law professors at the school, Susan Spies Roth, Susan Provenzano, and Deborah Tuerkheimer.

Winick opened for the petitioner side, which had 20 minutes to make its case. Winick, Fitzgibbon, and Lancry switched off speaking and aided one another whenever a gap in information appeared. The judges fired questions at the students whenever they wished–even if it was mid-sentence. At least one member of the team was able to directly answer whenever necessary.

Burns opened for the respondents who also had 20 minutes to talk and then had to field equally difficult and targeted questions. Each side was also given a five minute rebuttal.

When the arguments finished, the judges praised the students for their command of the facts and for their ability not to get enmeshed in the emotional aspects of the issues. “Obviously this is a hot-button issue,” Professor Roth said, “and you dealt with such incredible poise that the words sounded like you had been using them since you were in utero.”

The post-debate period was also a time for the professors to share constructive criticism.  For both the petitioners and respondents, the judges focused their critique mainly on the students’ choice of words. Professor Tuerkheimer said to the group, “I think the times you were able to point out holes in arguments is because the words that came out were not carefully chosen.”

Professor Sorenson further cautioned the respondents to avoid using the phrase “our women” when speaking about such a sensitive topic. “You guys already have job of arguing the position that many feminists oppose,” Sorenson said. “When you use the term ‘our women,’ it appears to objectify and demean people on whose behalf you purport to argue.”

This advice aligns with the sort of skills Barr hopes would come from an experience like this. “In addition to these kids talking about and understanding one of the most important cases of the term,” Barr said, “they are also getting this experience about how to speak.”

        Sorenson reiterated the point.  “Being an effective communicator is probably the most important skill as a lawyer,” Sorenson said. “You need to be able to communicate to your client, to a jury, to a judge, to a boardroom, to an opposing counsel, so those skills–the poise, the confidence, the clarity–are absolutely essential.”

For Provenzano the key is exactness. “What you learn when you are doing this work is the importance of precision.”

The Supreme Court has yet to vote on the case–like the Northwestern judges, who declared an old-fashioned Parker tie.  The students, moreover, weren’t earning any credit.

Barr said, “They aren’t getting anything from this other than the joy of learning and the amazing opportunity to speak in front of professors.”