Van Vleck Competition: Preliminary Round Judges

The George Washington University Law School invites you to serve as a judge for the Preliminary Rounds of the Van Vleck Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition on Saturday, November 1, 2025. We are located at 2000 H Street, NW in Washington, DC.

This is tied for the largest Van Vleck Competition ever (124 competitors), and we would be extremely appreciative of your time and participation.

This year, the final round will be presided over by a panel of three esteemed judges on Thursday, February 5, 2026:

• Chief Justice John Roberts, Supreme Court of the United States
• Judge Joan Larsen, US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
• Judge Barbara Lagoa, US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit

Responsibilities

Preliminary Round judges are responsible for scoring two briefs and two rounds. Judges will hear two oral arguments: one "on brief" (students arguing for the side they briefed) and the other "off brief" (students advocating for the side they did not brief).  To help you prepare, the Problem, Bench Memorandum, Judges' Packet, and Briefs will be sent via e-mail approximately three weeks prior to the competition. Brief scores are due virtually by two days before the competition. 

The Problem

SocialAI, Inc., is a social media company that boasts a fully automated social media platform that is exclusively run by its self-developed AI program, the Behavioral Recognition Artificial Intelligence Network (“BRaiN”).  The BRaiN independently and autonomously makes all decisions on SocialAI’s platform concerning what is to be promoted, advertised, or removed. The State of New Columbia has seen that the use of AI could serve as a potential danger and has enacted the Commonsense Artificial Intelligence Review Act (“CAIR” Act), which requires human review of content flagged by social media users and, if requested, a reasoned explanation by a human being of why content is not removed, with a fine and an injunction imposed on an offending party.  SocialAI failed to comply with the statute and at least one individual was hospitalized due to misleading advertisements that were promoted by BRaiN to sensitive individuals.  New Columbia sued SocialAI for violating the CAIR Act and Social AI filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, which was granted. The issue is now before the Supreme Court of the United States with the following questions presented:

1. Whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, preempts New Columbia’s Commonsense Artificial Intelligence Review Act as applied to SocialAI, Inc. in this case.
2. Whether New Columbia’s Commonsense Artificial Intelligence Review Act violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to SocialAI, Inc. in this case.