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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: September 4, 2002
Latest Update: September 4, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Lecture Notes and Comments: Wednesday, September 4, 2002.
These are raw notes as I recall them.

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, September 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Moot Court is a law school practice program that permits law students to argue the law before an appellate court. In moot court we provide a forum in which students are given a chance to argue as one would in a court of law. In this undergraduate moot court, we teach, first of all, how we would handle the argument of an actual legal case. Then we use the skills learned in legal argument to argue social issues.

My goals for you in this course are to learn:

1. How to structure a reasonable argument, respecting the system of law, evidence, perspective, and the policy of the law.
2. To learn a couple of dozen legal concepts to a level of comfort at which you can argue them on your feet before professionals.
3. To learn the different feel between an oral argument in front of professionals, and legal research, two very different areas of law.
4. To learn how to structure a legal brief.
5. To use that brief in oral argument.

   We spoke of the need to recognize social injustice, such as the taking of rights to water in a third world country as the price of any further financial aid. We will discuss a number of justice issues, including the rights of indigenous peoples, and the Yanomami of Brazil. We will choose from amongst these issues, those we will brief together.

   We will use the text Teaching Diversity and Social Justice to consider a variety of ways in which we can get the message of social justice across to school children, to peers in the university, to our communities. The text is based on the works of educators such as Paulo Freire of Brazil.

   Materials on the social justice issues we take on will be covered by information on the Dear Habermas site.

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