by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
GAINESVILLE — The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States came to the University of Florida last week.
John Roberts was part of the panel judging the Moot Court Final Four Competition and also attended private receptions at a nearby museum and later at UF President Bernard Machen’s home on Friday. While the reception’s guest list wasn’t public, the Moot Court competition certainly was.
The annual competition gives second-year law students a chance to display their written and verbal argumentative skills in front of a panel of judges. This year’s panel included Chief Justice Roberts and three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals from the Eleventh Circuit: Susan Black, Peter Fay and Rosemary Barkett, who are also UF alumni. (Roberts went to Harvard.)
“As a grad, the team made me proud,” said Judge Black, who presides over court in Jacksonville. “They had to prepare rapidly because of the hurricane and this was the only time we could get Justice Roberts. They were one of the most accomplished teams I’ve heard while presiding over moot court.”
Chief Justice Roberts also praised the teams.
“All the advocates had a confidence in their argument‚” he said. “You could tell they were enjoying what they were doing.‚”
That wasn’t the case at the start. Best Brief, Best Oralist and Best Team award winner Cary Aronovitz of Miami developed a couple of lumps in his throat as the first student to stand before the board.
“Chief Justice Roberts asked me the question I didn’t want to answer from the start,” said Aronovitz. “I anticipated the question, I just didn’t want to have to answer it. But once I got the reply out and his head started nodding, that was a confidence booster.”
Aronovitz and Kevin Combest of Gainesville were the petitioners and Robert Davis of Ocala and Tara Nelson of Orlando were respondents in the hypothetical case of “Webb Department of Motor Vehicles vs. Planned Parenthood of Webb.” (Where’s Webb? Nowhere. It’s a fictitious place used in place of a state name.)
It involved material unique to Florida because the state was the first to offer specialized license plates and also the first to offer the “Choose Life” slogan on a license plate. The two issues that were argued were whether the charge imposed by the “Choose Life” license plate stature is a tax and whether the message violated the First Amendment.
Chief Justice Roberts asked Aronovitz how a tax could be voluntary, such as the purchase of the license plate tax, when he thought all taxes were involuntary.
Aronovitz used examples of taxes on wine and luxury vehicles to explain voluntary taxes.
One member of his opposition also walked away with an award. Robert Davis was named the “Best Overall Participant” of the competition.
“It’s very important to get the firm’s name out to the competitors and meet them,” said Charles Abbot, a partner at Holland and Knight, the statewide law firm that’s a major sponsor of the program. “We’ve hired about 8-10 people out of the final four competition over the years.”
The competition started in the summer when 28 students were invited to prepare an appellate brief on a hypothetical case, which is worth 40 percent of their final score. Once the brief is submitted, students then prepare two 10-minute oral arguments, which are worth 30 percent each. Students first argue against the position they took in their brief and then in support of it.
Fourteen students are chosen out of the group of 28 to join the moot court team and five from that group are chosen to compete in the Final Four Competition. Two teams of two and an alternate are featured in the competition.
“It was a lot of hard work, long hours and excitement for us,” said Tara Nelson, a respondent in the Final Four Competition. “I never thought I’d be excited to go back to reading for classes, but it’s starting to pile up.”
And Roberts’ plans? He stayed in Gainesville to see Saturday night’s football game.
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— photos by UF Law staff photographer Chen Wang