An all-1L Harvard Law School Immigration Law team has just won the Ninth Annual Immigration Law Moot Court Competition, which was held from February 21-23 at NYU Law School. Harvard faced off with teams from Cardozo, Columbia, and defending champion Florida Coastal School of Law before moving on to the quarter and semi-finals. In the final round of the competition, the Harvard team found itself pitted against two competition Best Oralists from Baylor University. Judges James Graves (5th Cir.), Richard Wesley (2nd Cir.) and J. Paul Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) presided over the final round and commended the team for their courtroom presence and oral skills. The team was comprised of Lake Coreth, Rachel Endick, Harold Lee, and Stephen Silva, who all hail from Section 5. They received invaluable coaching from John Quinn (’10) and David Tulchin (’73) of Sullivan & Cromwell.

The NYU Immigration Law Moot is an annual competition at which teams represent an immigrant and the Government of the United States to argue current issues in immigration law. Parties engage in appellate advocacy before the Federal Court of Appeals for the “Fourteenth Circuit.” This year, the problem concerned questions regarding an administrative agency’s limits in using extra-record evidence to qualify criminal convictions as crimes involving moral turpitude and the due process implications of denying an asylum application based on administratively noticed facts.