Second-year LSU Law students Haley Grieshaber (left) and Allison Adger won the 2022 Robert Lee Tullis Moot Court Competition on Monday, Oct. 17.
Second-year LSU Law students Haley Grieshaber and Allison Adger were crowned champions of the 2022 Robert Lee Tullis Moot Court Competition after facing off against fellow second-year students Abbie Brashier and Camille Webre in the final round of the internal competition on Monday, Oct. 17.
As winners, Adger and Grieshaber will have their names inscribed on the Tullis plaque located outside of the Robinson Courtroom. All four finalists will receive automatic invitations to membership on the Board of Advocates next year.
The distinguished panel of judges overseeing the final round of competition included the Hon. John W. deGravelles (’74), United States District Judge, U.S. District Court for Middle District of Louisiana; Elizabeth Murrill (’91), Solicitor General, Louisiana Department of Justice; Jamie Flowers, Assistant United States Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana; and Lykisha Vaughan (’12), Managing Attorney, Family Law Unit, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.
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. The tournament consists of two preliminary rounds, with the top 16 teams advancing to the elimination rounds. Those teams then compete in a one-loss elimination bracket until a champion is determined.
In this year’s finals, Adger and Grieshaber represented Edward Nashton, a detainee of a state detention facility where Brashier and Webre’s client, Jonathon Crane, was a warden prior to the trial. Nashton sued Crane in federal court, claiming that the conditions of confinement at the facility violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The panel of judges heard two oral arguments: Whether the objective test proffered in Kingsley v. Hendrickson to determine liability for excessive force claims, brought by detainees under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, extends to conditions of confinement claims; and whether pretrial detainees have a “clearly established” constitutional right to protection from heightened exposure to COVID-19.
