LAW 2758 - Advanced Appellate Skills
The primary focus of the Advanced Appellate Skills course will be the introduction of students to advanced techniques in the crafting of an appellate brief, principally focusing on the crafting of briefs to the United States Supreme Court. This will be done through a series of workshops, combining lecture, readings, and interactive exercises. In addition, the course will introduce students to advanced techniques in the oral argument of an appeal, focusing principally on argument to the Supreme Court. Differences between actual briefs and argument before the high Court and conventions utilized in interscholastic moot court competitions will be pointed out.
Enrollment in the course is limited to, and mandatory for, those students selected by the Director of Student Advocacy Programs to represent Hofstra in interscholastic moot court competition. That selection, for most teams, occurs following tryouts typically held early in the fall semester. The course will be taught on weekday evenings and/or weekend days to minimize conflicts with students’ academic classes.
The course will be conducted, outside of the traditional semester structure, during the moot court competition “season,” which typically runs from October to April. It is anticipated that the course will begin shortly after September tryouts and team selections, and end in March, when the last briefs typically are submitted in competition. Early in the process there will be plenary sessions, attended by all competitors. Thereafter, the course will be conducted in smaller break-out sessions attended by students on a rolling basis, depending upon when in the “season” they will be submitting their briefs (and, eventually, orally arguing) in competition.
Students will earn one academic credit for satisfactory completion of the course in the semester in which their team brief is submitted in competition. They will earn a second credit following their satisfactory preparation for and performance of oral argument in their respective competition. It is possible that a student who participates in an interscholastic moot court competition will not earn any academic credit for his or her participation in the course and the competition, if that student is otherwise taking the maximum allowable number of academic credits in a semester.
Credits: 1 or 2
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