Bob Edmunds, who served on the Supreme Court of North Carolina, shared with competitors of Elon Law's Ninth Billings, Exum & Frye National Moot Court Competition that a lack of diverse professional backgrounds on the U.S. Supreme Court should be remedied.
Consider this: Among the nine justices who now comprise the U.S. Supreme Court, all attended either Harvard Law or Yale Law. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law only after transferring from Harvard because of family.
Eight of the nine forged their credentials for the high court by presiding on a federal circuit court.
Yet it wasn’t long ago that the U.S. Supreme Court boasted a collection of jurists from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds.
For instance:
- Hugo Black graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law and served as a United States Senator.
- Earl Warren graduated from the University of California Berkeley School of Law before starting his career as a district attorney and, later, serving his state as governor.
- Thurgood Marshall, a graduate of Howard University School of Law, worked as executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and solicitor general.
- And Sandra Day O’Connor? The Stanford Law graduate was a rancher who cut her political teeth in the Arizona State Senate before serving as a state trial and appellate judge.
“My point is not really that (current justices) aren’t learned or that they don’t deserve their places on the Supreme Court,” said Robert H. Edmunds Jr., a former senior associate justice on the Supreme Court of North Carolina, now of counsel at Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP. “But to steal a line from President Lyndon Johnson, I’d feel a lot better if one of them had run for county sheriff somewhere along the line. Some variety might really serve the court well. It might serve all of us well.”
Edmunds delivered the keynote address on Oct. 20, 2018, during Elon Law’s Ninth Billings, Exum & Frye National Moot Court Awards Banquet, where he suggested that national leaders consider for future U.S. Supreme Court vacancies the “extremely talented jurists” who comprise the supreme courts among the states.
Doing so would give elected leaders a better sense of how a nominee might rule when not bound by precedent, as they are when serving on a federal circuit court. “No one in Washington is looking at these fully capable men and women,” Edmunds said, “and, frankly, I think that’s a shame.”
The keynote remarks capped one of Elon Law’s larger moot court competitions in recent years featuring 30 teams from 26 schools across the United States. Natalie Rhoads and John Riordan of Liberty University School of Law were crowned competition champions following a close final round against a team from the University of Houston Law Center.
Riordan was also named the best oral advocate in the competition’s final round and preliminary rounds.
The fall competition asked competitors to argue case law surrounding a fictional lawsuit where plaintiffs alleged the roadside crosses honoring fallen law enforcement were a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
The Liberty Law team received a replica of Elon Law’s Chief Justices’ Cup and will have its school name engraved on the permanent trophy that resides at Elon Law. Each individual member of the first-place team also receives a plaque.
Liberty Law and the University of Houston Law Center teams argued in the final round before a panel of four judges including Edmunds; the Hon. Thomas D. Schroeder, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina; the Hon. Catherine C. Eagles of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina; and the Hon. John M. Tyson of the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
The Billings, Exum & Frye National Moot Court Competition honors three former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justices – Rhoda Bryan Billings, James Exum, and Henry E. Frye, all founding members of Elon Law’s Advisory Board – and each year focuses on constitutional law issues.
Moot court teams participated in three preliminary rounds of oral argument, after which the field was narrowed for quarterfinal, semifinal and championship rounds. Teams submitted briefs in advance of the competition, representing either the petitioner or the respondent in the hypothetical case before the United States Supreme Court. Competitors were judged on the quality of their appellate brief and oral arguments.
“We are honored each year to have so many teams from law schools across the country travel here for our competition,” said Alan Woodlief, Elon Law’s senior associate dean and director of the Moot Court Program. “The scope of the competition – almost 100 competitors and coaches, 100 attorneys and judges, 100 Elon Law students and faculty – is amazing.”
Semifinal Round Judges
- The Honorable L. Patrick Auld, United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
- The Honorable Lindsay R. Davis, Jr., Former Judge, North Carolina Superior Court
- The Honorable Richard L. Doughton, Emergency Judge, North Carolina Superior Court
- The Honorable Wendy M. Enochs, Former Judge, North Carolina Court of Appeals
- The Honorable James L. Gale, North Carolina Superior Court
- The Honorable Carrie F. Vickery, North Carolina District Court
- The Honorable Ralph A. Walker, Former Judge, North Carolina Court of Appeals
- Dean Enrique Armijo, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor Elon University School of Law
Elon Law Moot Court Board committee chairs for the Ninth Billings, Exum & Frye National Moot Court Competition
- Timaura Barfield and Adam Etzel, competition co-chairs
- Olivia Matte and Stephanie Peterson, judge recruitment
- J.R. Bales and Richard Williams, scoring
- Rebecca Anderson and Ashley Henson, hospitality
- Rachel Adekanye and Jordan Hensley, bailiff recruitment and coordination
About Elon Law:
Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the preeminent school for engaged and experiential learning in law. With a focus on learning by doing, it integrates traditional classroom instruction with course-connected, full-time residencies-in-practice in a logically sequenced program of transformational professional preparation. Elon Law’s groundbreaking approach is accomplished in 2.5 years, which provides distinctive value by lowering tuition and permitting graduates early entry into their legal careers.