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Why (as in yaverbaum)
ment, while his very lovely wife fed us and did not let us go thirsty. She actually came to the oral argument to root us on.
What was boring? Simple: both the issue that we had to argue and the student judge who had chosen it. In a world of raging civil rights and civil liberties issues—plus, if one wanted to be a bit less political, issues arising in connection with the evolving securities law—our case, the precise issue of which I can’t recall, had to do with a lawsuit that turned on the question whether or not an alleged easement to enter the prop- erty that could have existed, if at all, only by either “prescription” or “necessity,” did in fact exist and therefore would be enforced. Are you bored with this earth-shattering, value-laden question yet? Well, try researching and writing about it. Try also arguing the pros or cons (I forget which) in front of the idiot who had decided that it would be a stimulating question to tackle. I practiced in the world of real estate for all but about three years of my career and never came across anything remotely related to an issue concerning common law easements. And, if I had, I would have turned it over to the people at the title company to ponder and then to ensure against any problem. I would have not have spent more than two minutes analyzing it.
In any event, Todd and I won, which I guess was satisfying and, in any event, better than losing. I had made a friend through the exercise and learned what moot court was about. I otherwise filed and forgot what had been a relatively stultifying experience.
Obviously, the story does not end there. At some point in the early part of the second semester, I was notified that, based upon my perfor- mance in first-year moot court, I had been selected to participate in the annual Harlan Fiske Stone Moot Court Competition. Would I be inter- ested? Only thirty-two students would compete. There would be sixteen teams, paired by the people who ran the competition, and, as in the first year, each pair would write a brief and argue as if the case were to be decided by the United States Supreme Court. The issue that would be contested would be the same for all competitors. They would be told whether they were to write an appellant’s brief or a brief for the respon- dent, and then the fun would begin. There would be four elimination
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