News
Students face off at Leahy competition
On Tuesday, Oct. 7, the Barristers’ Council hosted the thirty-ninth annual Leahy Moot Court Competition finals in front of an audience of faculty and students in Hart auditorium. The finals featured two teams of two students each presenting arguments on opposite sides of an appellate-level case to a distinguished panel of federal court judges. Lew Jan Olowski and Erika Stallings, 2Ls, represented the petitioner, Rose & Co., Inc. and Christina Calce, 2L, and Christine McIsaac, 3L, represented Sell-It, Inc. in a fictional case that mirrored a dispute heard in a federal district court in New York between Tiffany & Co. and eBay.
Law school demystified for first-year law students
Entering law school, students are often overwhelmed by an abundance of movies, books, friends, family, and other lawyers all giving the same message: law school is hell. Students dread long sessions of pouring over casebooks punctuated by brief opportunities for their professor to publicly make them look foolish through the Socratic Method.
For this reason, the Resident Fellows (RFs) in Gewirz held a series of lectures entitled “Demystifying Law School.” The goal was for students to attend these meetings and leave with some of their apprehensions alleviated.
Candidates' platforms center on South Asian issues
On Wednesday, Oct. 8, representatives from the South Asian community and Presidential campaigns participated in an election panel. Asheesh Agarwal, special counsel to Senator John McCain, and Preeta Bansal, senior policy advisor to Senator Barack Obama, discussed a wide range of topics moderated by Amol Sharma, from the Wall Street Journal.
Final Presidential debates fail to be game-changers
Senators John McCain of Arizona and Barack Obama of Illinois met for the last two debates, one at Belmont University on Oct. 7 and the other at Hofstra University on Oct. 15. Those meetings marked the beginning of the end of what has been the longest presidential campaign in United States history, a process that started nearly two years ago. Both debates touched on familiar themes, and the candidates repeated much of what Americans already knew about them. Throughout the campaign, and especially in the debates, Obama has tried to paint McCain as no different from President Bush. Polls have suggested that these attacks have met with some success.
Students, officers air security concerns
Georgetown Law’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) has a simple motto: to save lives. Yet the relatively high officer turnover rate—according to a flier distributed at the meeting, five security officers have quit in the past six months—does not bode well for student safety. In an effort to discuss this and other issues, a Public Safety Town Hall was held on Oct. 16, in Hart Auditorium. Approximately 50 attendees listened to Director Edward Piper and Linda Hopper (of the Training Department) summarize DPS’s policies and goals, and then had a chance to ask questions.
Justices visit law school
Jonathan Koehle, 1L
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice Stephen Breyer, and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan were on the Georgetown Law campus on Thursday, Oct. 2, for the Sandra Day O’Connor Project series on The State of the Judiciary. The topic for the project this year was “Our Courts and Corporate Citizenship.”
Norovirus hits main campus hall
Raha Wala, 2L
Last week at least 192 Georgetown University students developed gastrointestinal illnesses that likely originated from food in campus cafeterias, according to an e-mail sent to the university community by Todd Olson, Vice President for Student Affairs on Georgetown’s main campus.
Public interest professors share insight and advice
Seth Engel, 1L
At a time when the economy appears on the brink of failure and the nation’s political landscape hangs in the balance of a single election, student curiosity about careers in public interest law is bound to be high. The Office of Public Interest and Community Service (OPICS) at Georgetown Law serves those students through programs such as its Pizza and Public Interest series, the first of which took place on Wednesday, Oct. 1 on the 12th floor of Gewirz.
Palin and Biden defend their campaigns
Charlie Stones, 1L
Republican Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska squared off against Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware Thursday night in the first and only vice presidential debate.
Kantor advises on international arbitration careers
Dawson Smith, 2L
This past Wednesday, October 1, students met in McDonough 201 to hear Adjunct LL.M. Professor Mark Kantor discuss the realities of international arbitration—not just as a practice, but also as a career and a lifestyle.