NAAC Team Advances to Octofinals
After three rounds of oral argument at the National Appellate Advocacy Competition (NAAC) regional in Brooklyn, New York, this weekend, Marquette University Law School students Michael Crane (3L), and Samantha Evei (3L) were 2-1 and seeded thirteenth out of 33 teams. Crane and Evei advanced to the octofinals, but unfortunately lost a very close match to another team. Sam Berg (3L) was also a member of the team and wrote the team’s brief. Attorneys (and former NAAC competitors) Alyssa Dowse and Lindsey Greenawald coached the team.
Michael Beckman (3L) and Zachary Wittchow (3L) also competed in the Brooklyn regional, facing tough competition. Their team was coached by attorneys Jesse Blocher and Michael Cerjak. Professor Lisa Mazzie is the faculty advisor for both teams.
The NAAC is sponsored by the American Bar Association Law Student Division.
Although the Supreme Court decides dozens of cases every year, it has never decided how to decide those cases. That is, the Court has never adopted a governing approach to constitutional interpretation. Instead, the justices seem to bounce from one method to the next, even when considering the same subject matter. What explains this methodological pluralism? Why doesn’t the Court consider itself bound under the doctrine of stare decisis not only to follow the substantive results of earlier constitutional cases, but also the methodological tools it used in getting there?