Ames Moot Court

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Sotomayor was at Harvard Law School on Nov. 13 to hear finalists in the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition.

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In January, it was as if the U.S. Supreme Court were playing host to a tournament of champions for past winners of the Ames Moot Court Competition, with three attorneys who argued Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson having been on teams that won the competition within four years of each other at Harvard Law School.

You would never know it from her unhesitating, responsive arguments in the Ames Courtroom, but when Amanda Mundell ’17 was growing up in California she dreaded giving presentations in class. “I was a very nervous speaker,” she remembers, “so I decided that I was never going to do anything like this.

For Trenton Van Oss ’17, coming to Harvard Law School meant adapting to a different culture and experience as a student who had been educated at Christian schools, and whose strong allegiance to the GOP put him in a distinct minority at a secular school with a predominantly liberal student body and faculty.

At 96 years old, the Hon. John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice (Ret.) Supreme Court of the United States, returned to the bench to preside over the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2016 Ames Moot Court Competition.

A judicial temperament involves many qualities. For Merrick Garland, patience is one of them.

Supreme Court justices, performance art, student protests and a vice president. A look back at 2015, highlights of the people who visited, events that took place and everyday life at Harvard Law School.

The final round of Harvard Law School’s 2015 Ames Moot Court Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions for appellate brief writing and advocacy in the country, took place on Nov. 16 in Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall.

A look behind the scenes of the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2015 Ames Moot Court Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions for appellate brief writing and advocacy in the country.

The Board of Student Advisers at Harvard Law School has elected Isabel Broer, ’16, as its president for the 2015-16 year. Broer succeeds Claire Johnson, ’15.

The 2013 Ames Moot Court competition was held at Harvard Law School on Oct. 23. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg '56-'58 presided at the Ames final round. She was joined by Judge Merrick B. Garland '77 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

On a sunny day in June, seven members of the Sacks club, the team that won the Ames moot court competition in 1959, met on the steps of Langdell library to reminisce over what they called their “unlikely” victory, and to talk about where their lives had taken them in the fifty years since.

David Souter hung up his judge’s robes more than three years ago, after nearly two decades on the nation’s highest court. But on Thursday night, the retired Supreme Court justice seemed as sharp as ever as he directed his easygoing, often droll, always astute wit at the Harvard Law School students arguing before his bench during the final round of the 102nd Ames Moot Court Competition.

The experience of earlier moot court contests and many hours of rigorous study can seem to melt into the ether when surviving third-year Harvard Law School students face not just any panel of esteemed judges but one led by a U.S. Supreme Court justice. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the teams in the showdown round of the Ames Moot Court Competition tried to persuade a panel headed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to change the law of the land.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court presided over the oral argument in the final round of the 2011 Ames Moot Court Competition on Thursday, November 17th, 2011.The competition was held in the historic Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School.

The final round of the annual Ames Moot Court Competition took place on November 16 in the Ames Courtroom.

The final round of Harvard Law School’s annual Ames Moot Court Competition was held on November 16, 2009, in Ames Courtroom. Richard A. Posner, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, presided as chief justice. Joining him on the panel were Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Barrington D. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.