IRA Proposal for Moot Court: Attachments A and B

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: March 30, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

This project, funded by IRA consecutively over the last 13 years, showcases academic discourse in a forensic setting. For the first 11 years we duplicated a law school moot court, producing an academic performance in which CSUDH students argued a legal case before a panel of esteemed local Judges. Two years ago, we began to merge this performance to showcase our students' proficiency in legal reasoning and argument in the format of professional presentation of research papers, the papers focussed on major social issues, such as the antecedents of violence. Last year six of us attended the Western Social Science Association meetings in Fort Worth at which we presented six papers. This year, we are presenting a dozen papers with 24 students at the WSSA meetings in San Diego. Because it is so close to us, we increased dramatically our participation this year.

In 1999-2000 we expanded the reach of our moot court program. In addition to the basic training in legal reasoning and argument, with a culminating court simulation before practicing Judges from L.A County, we included the presentation of more than a dozen papers by students at professional academic conferences. Although we investigated the possibility of asking Professor Derrick Bell, of New York University Law School to return this Spring, the acceptance of so many professional papers, and our need to be at several conferences, prompted us to postpone Professor Bell's visit until next year.

Professor Bell filled the campus auditorium in 1994, and has stayed in touch with our moot court program ever since. His fame in writing for and fighting for racial equality before the law, and our growth as a program to include social issues beyond present court cases, make his return visit to this campus enormously important to both the campus and its service community. This year we realize that we must expand our budget request to cover charges for the video setup essential to the auditorium performance, for the auditorium cost of setup, and for additional such expenses. We tried to arrange a partnership with a local corporation to take care of usch expenses this year, but Dr. Blischke was unable to help us with this, and we have no prior experience in this area, even though Dr. Lyons was gracious in giving us permission to pursue such a partnership.

Our moot court program has exhibited tremendous growth and national recognition. We are one of four moot court programs to be represented at the American Political Science Association 2000 Meetings in Washington, D.C. in August 2000. And we are currently working with students both at CSUDH and at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, to share in that presentation. For these reasons, and because of his reputation in this area, we would also like to ask Professor Bell to visit for two days, so that he could assist us in a project evaluation. We also could not have afforded that on this year's budget.

Since we were to be charged for the use of the auditorium, and for other amenities, we discovered that we did not have enough money in the 1999-2000 budget to afford both Professor Bell's visit for a major moot court performance, and still get our students to their conferences. Our 2000-2001 request thus includes the cost for Professor Bell's visit and the cost of continued presentations and the cost of getting our students to the conferences for their presentations.

Further description of this program can be found in Creation of a Virtual Academic Community, a paper given on Friday, March 24, 2000, at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Meetings, in New Orleans.