On November 6th, Jesuit’s Mock Trial Team placed 11th in the world at the Empire Competition, which consisted of 40 teams from 5 different countries. Jesuit Mock Trial qualified last year in Baltimore to compete this year in Chicago. To qualify, a team would have to place top 15th in a past Empire Competition or submit an application to be reviewed by Empire.
Eight seniors and three juniors flew to Chicago to compete in this year’s case— a civil case which consisted of a plaintiff and defense.
The Empire League was founded in 2007 and is highly competitive because it consists of students and teams that won state or nationals.
“Individual champions and team champions from different countries coming together to compete,” Mock Trial coach Dr. Exley said.
Jesuit competed in four rounds against four teams including the team that placed first. First place was Trinity Pacific Christian School in California. This team has won the Empire World Champions for the past 5 years and won individual awards as well. Jesuit lost but competed well against Trinity Pacific.
The plaintiff is the side suing and the defense is the person or subject getting sued. The case was about the shooting of a weapon and the team needed to find out if there was negligence of hiring from the gun shop or a possible malfunction. The students had to dissect the case and come up with questions and an argument for the plaintiff and defense.
The students had been studying this case since July, and worked during and after school, and on the weekend, to be the most prepared.
“A lot of work went into this a lot of hours and I think we were able to definitely take a lot away from this experience, and I’m excited to see how we perform in the Oregon Competition,” one of the Mock Trial Captains, Sabatino Stacchi, said.
Sashwat Ravishankar, another Captain, felt similarly.
“This team definitely exceeded our expectations. We really put in a lot of hard work into preparing for this season,” Ravishankar said.
This winter season, Jesuit Mock Trial will participate in the Classroom Law Project.
Jesuit Mock Trial has three team levels: Green, Black, and Gold.
Interested in trying out for the Classroom Law Project? Email Sashwat Ravishankar ([email protected]) with any questions about joining/participating.
