2019 Tullis Moot Court Competition champtions Mary Katherine Loos and Emiley Dillon
Second-year LSU Law students Mary Katherine Loos and Emiley Dillon won the 2019 Tullis Moot Court Competition at the finals event held on Monday evening, Oct. 21.
Along with having their names inscribed on the Tullis plaque located outside of the Robinson Courtroom—where the final round of competition was held—they will also be invited to be members of the Board of Advocates next year.
Loos and Dillon bested fellow second-year students Kendall Dicke and John Parker to win the competition. As finalists of the competition, which included two preliminary rounds and 16 teams that squared off in elimination rounds, Dicke and Parker also receive Board of Advocates membership invitations.
During the final round of competition, the teams presented oral arguments in a hypothetical United States Supreme Court case, Brittney Cooper v. United States of America.
Set against the backdrop of the national opioid epidemic, the case asked the Supreme Court to consider: Whether individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in prescription drug records held in state databases of controlled substance prescriptions; and whether the administrative search and special needs exceptions to the probable cause and warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment apply to searches of state databases of controlled substance prescriptions.
The final round was judged by a panel of eminent attorneys and judges that included Jeff Landry, Attorney General for the State of Louisiana; Hon. Patrick J. Hanna, United States Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana; Lindsay Blouin, Deputy District Defender, East Baton Rouge Parish Office of the Public Defender; and Stephen Babcock, partner at Babcock Louisiana Trial Lawyers.
Named in honor of the late Dean Emeritus of the LSU Law Center, the Robert Lee Tullis Moot Court Competition has been a tradition of honor since 1936. Teams of second-year law students write an appellate brief in a hypothetical United States Supreme Court case and then argue the case to panels of attorneys and judges in an oral advocacy tournament.
