National Mock Trial Competition Encounters a Real Legal Challenge

May 5, 2009

Author: Robbie Brown

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/education/06mock.html

The nation’s top high school mock trial competition has become an actual legal battleground.

Earlier this spring, the Maimonides School, an Orthodox Jewish day school in Brookline, Mass., won the state mock trial championship — and with it a coveted spot in the prestigious national competition in Atlanta this weekend. But the finals of the tournament fall on Saturday, and the students do not compete on the Sabbath.

When tournament organizers refused to tweak the schedule, the students’ parents and school officials did what supporters of any attorney-in-training might do: they hired a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, a renowned litigator who has tried cases before the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Lewin filed a complaint of religious discrimination with the Department of Justice, which promised to investigate.