Brooklyn Tech Takes Top Prize in NYC Moot Court Competition

Ask most people what the difference is between a moot court team and a mock trial team, and they’ll clam up. But the students at Brooklyn Technical High School could teach most people a thing or two in the courtroom.

Six Brooklyn Tech students – Muhammed Mustafa, Andrei Moraru, Pavel Kushnerov, Mary Cao, Gianni Wong and Edward Bello – represented the school in the New York City Moot Court Championships and won the top prize, beating out more than 50 other New York City high schools in four rounds.

The students, led by Brooklyn Tech social studies teacher Bill Kahn, argued their way to a win in front of three real Federal judges, including U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Denny Chin.

The win on Dec. 5 marks Brooklyn Tech’s third win in the competition since the team began in 2005.

“It was gratifying,” Kahn said. “The students have worked incredibly hard for this. Watching it come to fruition is satisfying. It’s a beautiful thing.”

A moot court team is not the type of trial you see on Law & Order – that’s a mock trial team. The mock trial court has students arguing a real trial case, one with witnesses and lawyers interrogating and cross-examinations.

But as in a real court system, there’s a chance to appeal a judge’s decision, or argue that the judge got it wrong based on evidence – that’s a moot court case. The students, who took on the role of lawyers, argued in front of what is essentially the U.S. Supreme Court. The competition teaches the students to think on their feet, how to argue and present a case orally and how to act in a professional setting, according to Kahn.

The team argued a fictional case about stop-and-frisk, which was prepared by Fordham Law and the Justice Resource Center, and the students had about a month and a half to prepare for the competition.

The students must not only know the fictional case inside and out, but they must know the details of all related cases so they can field whatever questions the judges have for them. Each student is given 10 minutes to argue his or her case, and to answer all questions from judges.

To Kahn, moot court is an irony. Kahn says this is because the judges interrogate the students based on their abilities, generating harder questions with each well-argued answer. The winners leave feeling beat up and kicked around, and the students who didn’t quite grasp the case leave feeling like they mastered it because they were given easier questions.

“It’s an irony because the student has won at the end,” Kahn said. “Even the kid who didn’t grasp the concept put themselves out there. They handled it.”

The competition was held at Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn Tech bested the High School of American Studies at Lehman College to win the citywide title.

“It gives them more than a taste – it gives them a full meal of what it’s like to argue a case,” Kahn said.