Langley High goes to court
By Monty Tayloe
Langley High School students got to try their hand at arguing this week's U.S. Supreme Court case weighing the constitutionality of the District of Columbia's handgun ban, D.C. vs. Heller.
Every year, the school holds Case Day, a mock trial that allows a group of students to experience a little slice of what it's like to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Not coincidentally, the real case went before the actual Supreme Court on Tuesday.
At Langley's Case Day, two student “attorneys” were assigned to argue the merits of each side. It sounds like another great learning experience – until you factor in the nine-member panel of lawyers, law professors, students, teachers and government officials that stands in for the Supreme Court at each Case Day.
“I think the Second Amendment stands out as a unique construction,” says Sasha Amini, a senior at Langley arguing the District's side of the case. Before Amini has finished his sentence, mock justices swoop in to cut him off.
“Is a handgun an arm? Or are handguns only issued to militia?” asks Dranesville School Board member and mock justice Janie Strauss.
“If legislators decided to ban all firearms in D.C., would your position support this statute?” interrupts David Koplow, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Amini struggles to answer only to be cut off again. And again. Although only stand-ins, the mock justices at Case Day do their best to approximate the feeling of actually arguing before the Supreme Court, where nine justices interrupt and question beleaguered attorneys to determine every possible argument for or against the constitutionality of a given law.
“I try not to hold back just because they're students,” mock justice Win Froelich, an attorney, said.
To stand up to that attack, the teenagers who will argue before the mock court have to put in a lot of prep time.
“I know more about gun laws now than I know about anything,” said Jordan Slick, one of the attorneys for the respondent's side along with Owen Masters.
“There's no scripts or anything, and we don't tell them what they're arguments should be,” explained Alison Cohen, an A.P. government teacher at Langley and the organizer of Case Day.
Although the trial is the highlight of Case Day, the event is bookended by other student debates and presentations. Mock trial participants also get the surreal experience of reliving the whole thing just a few days later, when they visit the actual Supreme Court to watch the actual proceedings of the case they just argued.
Justice Antonin Scalia arranges for the visits, and his son, Langley alum and practicing attorney John Scalia, served as one of the justices for Case Day. The students may also take some lasting skills from the event.
“You really learn how to argue your point,” said Tracy DeMocker, one of the student attorneys.
------ mtayloe@timespapers.com