bad attitude

I have developed very bad attitude towards moot court. I don't even like to capitalize it.

My bad attitude started with my biased professor, but that's not where my frustration lies now. I threw myself into my brief and I relished her bias because it sharpened my argument.

The problem is that now I care. I've forced myself into the mind of a criminal prosecutor, turned a small part of myself into a little alien who doesn't think that juveniles should have any special Miranda protections. Now I find that I care about that little alien. I want to argue passionately for it. I want to cheer on the prosecutor's side, even if most of me would prefer that the actual Supreme Court eventually crush the little alien.

And yet, now, a few days before my oral argument, I find that I don't have to wait for the Supreme Court to crush my little alien. I'm going to do it myself.

The moot court system takes us first-year law students and gives us eight short weeks to craft an argument that could ostensibly be made in front of the Supreme Court. To accomplish this goal, the Record is cut and trimmed to a small binder of facts, down from the boxes of evidence that would accompany an actual case. We are restricted from researching any briefs filed in the case. If there are multiple issues before the Supreme Court, the class is usually limited to discussion on one.

In other words, it's an artificial and information-restricted environment. Moot court is a communal 1L version of "Let's Pretend.” It’s the school playground. I engage in the fantasy that I have something to say, but I can't speak with any true authority on the issue. My little alien is doomed.

Of course I know logically that I need only do my best in this little playground, that a first year law student would never get in front of the Supreme Court and a first year law student doesn't have the time to truly craft her argument. Of course this is a law student playground; what else could it be? The point is the experience, not the argument. Of course I know all this.

But I still feel frustrated and hamstrung, still feel like I'm hobbling rather pathetically through the hoops.