2024 Van Vleck Constitutional Law Moot Court Final

2024 Van Vleck Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition

Thursday, January 25, 2024 | 1:30 pm

University Student Center, Betts Theatre

Welcome to the final round of the 74^th annual Van Vleck Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition. This competition is our largest and longest-running upper-level advocacy competition and is named for William C. Van Vleck, the longest-serving dean in the history of the Law School. He joined the GW Law faculty immediately after graduating with his JD in 1912 and served as dean of the law school from 1924 – 1948. Jake Stein, who graduated from GW Law during Van Vleck's last year as dean, described him as follows: "He was imperious. He would not invite you to speak with him after class.  His idea was, you are here to learn and I am here to teach.  He was all business." This attitude was reflected in the law school's recruitment brochure from that era, Studying Law in the Nation's Capital: Advantages of the George Washington University Law School (1927), which read in pertinent part, "Examinations are graded severely with the purpose of weeding out the slothful, inattentive, and incompetent." Until shortly after Dean Van Vleck’s retirement, moot court competitions or “Case Clubs” were run through the Student Bar Association.  In 1950, the Case Club became a separate student organization now known as the Moot Court Board, and this competition was named for Dean Van Vleck.

Moot court competitions provide valuable opportunities for students to hone their oral and written advocacy skills by engaging in mock appellate litigation. This year’s competition began last September, when 91 upper-level law students started researching the problem. Each team of two competitors was required to submit at least one written brief and present oral argument for each side.

To earn the right to present their arguments before today’s distinguished panel of judges, the two teams competing in today’s final round advanced through five previous rounds, which - in the words of Dean Van Vleck - were used for "weeding out the slothful, inattentive, and incompetent." All rounds were judged by practicing attorneys. The winning team of the competition will receive the Jacob Burns Award at the annual Awards Ceremony held the day before their graduation.

Problem Synopsis

Factual Summary

Petitioner Victoria Kahn is a woman in the State of New Columbia who seeks to become pregnant. She hesitates because she has a rare condition called Loeys-Dietz Syndrome (“LDS”), which creates a potentially fatal risk of aortic dissection during the pregnancy. In the event of an aortic dissection, Kahn’s doctor Dr. Ryan Dutch, also a Petitioner, has advised her that the safest method of treatment would be to abort the pregnancy.

The State of New Columbia has enacted an anti-abortion law that limits the circumstances where a woman may procure an abortion. The abortion statute prohibits abortion unless certain medical conditions exist in the mother that pose a health risk to her in the good faith reasonable judgment of a medical professional. The accepted conditions are explicitly enumerated in the statute.  The statute also includes a residual clause that incorporates into the exception diseases that present “similar” risks to the mother’s health as those enumerated.

In the event of a violation of this statute, the New Columbia Medical Licensing Board possesses the authority to punish Dr. Dutch as follows:

1. For a single violation, public censure by the Board.
2. For a second violation, thirty-day suspension of medical license.
3. For a third violation, permanent revocation of medical license.

Ms. Kahn and Dr. Dutch, in seeking to comply with the statute, sought guidance from both the Respondent New Columbia Medical Licensing Board, which declined to provide an opinion, and the hospital where Dr. Dutch conducts his practice, the University of New Columbia Medical Center, which declined to say if it would allow Dr. Dutch to perform the procedure. It is therefore unclear whether Ms. Kahn’s medical condition falls within the ambit of the existing statute.

Procedural Summary

Dr. Dutch and Ms. Kahn filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of New Columbia, seeking to enjoin the New Columbia Medical Licensing Board from enforcing the abortion statute. They argued that the statute is void for vagueness and therefore violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Licensing Board timely filed a motion to dismiss. The District Court granted that motion on standing grounds.

The Petitioners then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Thirteenth Circuit, where a three-judge panel split two to one and affirmed the District Court’s dismissal on the same standing grounds. Upon further appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States granted expedited certiorari to hear oral argument in this case on two issues:

Issue I

Do the federal courts have jurisdiction under Article III of the U.S. Constitution to adjudicate the constitutionality of N.C. Stat. § 30-77.1 (the “Abortion Statute”)?

Issue II

Does the Abortion Statute violate the vagueness doctrine based upon the Due Process Clause of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution?

The Competitors

The Judges

• Cornelia T.L. Pillard
• Cheryl Ann Krause
• Patricia Lee

Judge Pillard was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December 2013. She graduated from Yale College in 1983 and Harvard Law School in 1987. Following graduation, she served as a law clerk to Judge Louis H. Pollak from 1987 to 1988, and held the Marvin M. Karpatkin fellowship at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1988 to 1989. From 1989 to 1994 she was Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. She served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States from 1994 to 1997. In 1997, Judge Pillard joined the tenure-track faculty at Georgetown Law. She served from 1998 to 2000 as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. Judge Pillard returned to Georgetown Law, received tenure, and served from 2008 to 2009 as inaugural Academic Co-Director and Professor at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies, a London-based, Georgetown-led law study program conducted in collaboration with law schools from many different countries. Judge Pillard was an active member of the Georgetown Law Supreme Court Institute (SCI) from its founding in 2003, and became SCI Faculty Co-Director in 2011. She was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars during 2012-2013. Judge Pillard remained a full professor at Georgetown Law until her appointment as US Circuit Judge. Judge Pillard and her husband and teenage children live in Washington, DC.

Judge Krause was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in July of 2014. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, and graduated from Stanford Law School with highest honors.  After clerking for the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court, Judge Krause served for five years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Before assuming the bench, Judge Krause was a partner at a multi-national law firm where she specialized in white collar criminal defense and government investigations and served as outside counsel for the Board of Ethics of the City of Philadelphia. She has lectured in the past at Stanford and Columbia Law Schools and served as an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In addition to her work as a member of the American Law Institute, Judge Krause sits on the Boards of Trustees of the American Inns of Court and the National Constitution Center, and she was appointed by Chief Justice Roberts in 2021 to serve on the Space and Facilities Committee of the United States Judicial Conference.  Her 2020 law review article, Lawyer Wellbeing as a Crisis of the Profession, was the winner of the prestigious Warren E. Burger Prize.

Justice Lee was appointed to the Nevada Supreme Court in November of 2022 by Governor Steven Sisolak. She is the first African American woman and the first Asian American to serve as a Nevada Supreme Court Justice.  Justice Lee attended the University of Southern California and obtained a dual degree in psychology and communications in 1997. She then graduated from The George Washington University Law School in 2002. Prior to her appointment to the bench, Justice Lee was a partner with the Nevada law firm Hutchison & Steffen, where she practiced primarily in the field of complex commercial litigation. Justice Lee also acted as a volunteer attorney for the Children’s Attorney Project, where she represented abused and neglected children in Clark County, Nevada.  She began serving on the Pro Bono Advisory Council to support the efforts of Legal Aid Center’s Pro Bono Project and was subsequently nominated to the Board of Directors for the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, where she continued to serve until being appointed to her current position. Due to her tenacious efforts to grant under-served communities with fair access to justice, Justice Lee was awarded the Pro Bono Attorney of the Year by the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada in 2012 and holds the honor of being the first attorney in Nevada to win the prestigious National Pro Bono Publico Award awarded by the American Bar Association. When Justice Lee is away from Chambers, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Ronnie (a small business owner), and their two children, Brianna and Devin.