The Top 12 Respondent Teams in The 2020 Harlan Institute-Ashbrook Virtual Supreme Court

The teams will compete in the first round on April 10 and 11.

In October, the Harlan Institute and Ashbrook announced the Eighth Annual Virtual Supreme Court Competition. This competition offers teams of two high school students the opportunity to research cutting-edge constitutional law, write persuasive appellate briefs, argue against other students through video chats, and try to persuade a panel of esteemed attorneys during oral argument that their side is correct. This year the competition focuses on Torres v. Madrid.

We are proud to announce the top 12 respondent teams that will advance to the next round. Here are their preliminary oral argument videos, and their briefs. We announced the top 12 petitioner teams here.

Team 7476

• School: Pine Crest School
• Students: Pedro Ribeiro and Yuvraj Tuli
• Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
• Respondent Brief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihuBNEAQIvA

Team 7810

• School: Eastside Catholic High School
• Students: Sam Niehl and Ruoya Huang
• Location: Sammamish, Washington
• Respondent Brief

Team 7852

• School: Frisco CTE Center
• Students: Anita Ashok and Kashish Bastola
• Location: Frisco, Texas
• Respondent Brief

Team 7856

• School: Creekview High School
• Students: Abby Park and Shemaiah DeJorge
• Location: Carrollton, Texas
• Respondent Brief

Team 7860

• School: Creekview High School
• Students: Brian Kang and Angela Nguyen
• Location: Carrollton, Texas
• Respondent Brief

Team 7875

• School: BASIS Peoria
• Students: Pranav Saravanan and Siddhant Urunkar
• Location: Peoria, Arizona
• Respondent Brief

Team 7890

• School: Syosset High School
• Students: Rachel Lin and Kelly Kim
• Location: Syosset, New York
• Respondent Brief

Team 7976

• School: Joel Barlow High School
• Students: Catherine Gutowski and Leighton Schur
• Location: Redding, Connecticut
• Respondent Brief

Team 7988

• School: Greenwich High School
• Students: Steven Blank and Benjamin Shi
• Location: Greenwich, Connecticut
• Respondent Brief

Team 8007

• School: West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North
• Students: Akshat Agarwal and Jonathan Hu
• Location: Plainsboro Township, New Jersey
• Respondent Brief

Team 8022

• School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet
• Students: Avery Rose and Brooke Sanchez
• Location: Dallas, Texas
• Respondent Brief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7aOfsaldY

Team 8023

• School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet
• Students: Semira Morgan and Katelayn Vault
• Location: Dallas, Texas
• Respondent Brief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz0pKitXU8Y&ab_channel=GregorySeale

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

The briefs were well crafted. I say that as an owner of the law. The dipshits here may disagree, but no utterance they spew has the slightest validity, except in rent seeking.

Pro se criminal defendants outperformed defense lawyers in jury verdicts. These excellent high school students wrote briefs more compelling than experienced appellate lawyers.

It is likely, most of the students came from immigrant, intact patriarchal families. They are likely Democrats, but totally protected from the devastating effect of the Democrat lawyer on our society.

[rsteinmetz]

It would be interesting to do a demographic breakdown on the teams. It appears to have a high percentage of Asians as well as a pretty decent representation of Latinos. I can't be sure about actual African Americans.