Archive for 'Student News'

Pictured from left to right: Benjamin Crego, Brittany Dancel, Senior Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, Senior Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, Chief Judge Linda Ann Wells, Altanese Phenelus, and Chanel Rowe.

In the final round of the 10th Annual Moot Court Competition, held Saturday, Feb. 9, two teams of second-year law students presented arguments before a distinguished panel of judges at Rafael Diaz-Balart Hall.

Senior Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, presided as chief justice. Joining him on the panel were Senior Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Chief Judge Linda Ann Wells of the Florida Third District Court of Appeal.

The four students, who worked in teams of two, included: Benjamin Crego and Brittany Dancel, arguing for the petitioner, and Altanese Phenelus and Chanel Rowe, arguing for the respondent (the Sunshine County School Board).

The issues presented were whether the School Board violated the First Amendment rights of its students by: 1) preventing the wearing of “Islam is the Devil!” t-shirts under its dress code policy; and 2) suspending the students for speech communicated online while outside of school grounds.

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Pictured from L-R: Patricia Ramsey Chronicle, Graciela Cardona, Matthew Rogoff, Brigett Potts, Latoya Brown, & their coach Professor Erin Degnan

This past weekend, the FIU College of Law Board of Advocates Intercultural Human Rights Moot Court team won First Runner-Up at the Susan J. Ferrell Intercultural Human Rights Moot Court Competition. The competition was held at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, Feb. 1-3.

The team, which included 3L’s Latoya Brown, Patricia Ramsey Chronicle, Brigett Potts, Matthew Rogoff, and Graciela Cardona, was narrowly defeated in the final round against the City University of Hong Kong, despite receiving the highest overall oral argument scores from the Honorable Fausto Pocar, the former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The Susan J. Ferrell Moot Court Competition is a “competition revolving around a simulated court proceeding, in which teams representing both sides of the argument prepare written pleadings with respect to a fictional problem of international human rights law and policy, and present their arguments in an oral argument before the International Court of Justice.” This year, the competition featured a dispute under a bilateral investment treaty, environmental law issues, and the relocation of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.

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Third-year law student Andrea Canona will begin her law career as a law clerk through the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Honors Program, the largest and most prestigious federal entry-level attorney hiring program.

“When the Department of Justice informed me that I had been selected I was ecstatic, and frankly, a bit surprised,” Canona said. “The selection process is very competitive and I feel very fortunate to be in this position.”

Selections to this prestigious program are made based on several elements of a candidate’s background including a demonstrated commitment to government service, academic achievement, legal aid and clinical experience, leadership, and extracurricular activities that relate to the work of the DOJ.

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Pictured above, from left to right: Natalie Marcell (3L) and Bryan Belenson (3L).

The FIU College of Law Board of Advocates (BOA) hosted the American Bar Association (ABA) Southeast Regional Negotiation Competition this past weekend, where a FIU Law team took first place.

The competition, which had a total of 24 teams from five states, ended in dramatic fashion on Sunday morning, with a three-way tie among teams from FIU Law, the University of Georgia School of Law, and Stetson University College of Law. Following the ABA tie-breaking rules, FIU Law students Natalie Marcell (3L) and Bryan Belenson (3L) emerged as champions.

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Honorees in the Photo (from left to right): Judge Beatrice Butchko, Alexandra Bach Lagos, Esq. and Laura K. Wendell, Esq.

The FIU Women’s Law Society hosted its Networking Event Celebrating Women in Law on Nov. 1, 2012 at Kork Wine & Cheese in downtown Miami.

The Women’s Legal Society, which strives to connect and motivate future women lawyers to excel within the legal field, honored Judge Beatrice Butchko and Alexandra Bach Lagos, Esq. for their outstanding accomplishments in the legal community and constant support of FIU Women’s Law Society.

Judge Butchko presides over civil cases in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida and Alexandra Bach Lagos, Esq. is the immediate past president of Miami-Dade Florida Association for Women Lawyers.

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Third-year FIU Law student Samah Abukhodeir, was featured in a series of public interest videos for AlJazeera English Channel. She was one of six people chosen to discuss immigration issues as they relate to the 2012 U.S. elections.

“I think people forget what this country was founded on, that we’re all immigrants,” said Abukhodeir. For her, the top election issues are “jobs, immigration, and student loans.”

Samah Abukhodeir, a Palestinian-American law student, has been a student attorney in the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic for two semesters, where she has developed a passion for international human rights. She was born in Bartow, Florida to immigrant parents and received her Bachelors of Science in Psychology with a minor in Arabic and Child Development from Florida State University.

Watch the trailer:

The following op-ed by first-year FIU Law student Frandley Julien, The high cost of staying out of politics in Haiti, originally appeared in The Miami Herald on November 2, 2012. Frandley Julien was coordinator of the Initiative Citoyenne, a civic group in Cap-Haitien, Haiti in 2001-04.

Haiti has never been a better illustration than now of Edmund Burke’s quote that “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Traditionally, a huge portion of the country’s population has always prided itself in belonging to the “silent majority,” leaving the political scene to vagabonds and the bravest of serious souls. An understandable — albeit, not excusable — reason is the fact that Haiti’s successive dictatorial regimes, particularly the Duvaliers, have raised the killing of political opponents to the level of a national sport. Being in the silent majority was a manifestation of our survival instinct at its best.

However, well-educated citizens of good will should have known that their choice to generally refrain from participating in the political process would lead the country exactly where it is now, with successive incompetent governments and the exponential deterioration of the population’s living conditions. Moreover, the premise that abstention from politics would guarantee longevity could not be farther from the truth today. Quiet, law-abiding citizens are killed, kidnapped, raped on a daily basis in today’s Port-au-Prince; everybody is at the mercy of the all-powerful gangs.

During the past couple of months, there have been more and more protests against President Martelly’s stewardship of the country. Instead of listening to the population’s grievances expressed through numerous street demonstrations, the president, upon returning from the United Nations, countered with a march of his own, leading a crowd of his partisans and state employees through the nine miles separating the international airport from the National Palace.

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Members of the 2012-2013 Executive Board of the National Black Law Students Association were asked to give their best advice on what Black pre-law students should do to prepare for a successful law school experience. Here is what they wanted to share.

Advice:

As a third-year Black law student, I know that part of my duty is to assist the next generation of Black law students. In order to prepare for law school, Black college and graduate students should consider the following five steps (same advice I give my mentees).

(1) Find a mentor. Consider finding a mentor in a local bar association, a family friend who happens to be an attorney, or a person who is currently in law school. The key to success is finding answers for questions you may have. Mentors can answer your questions about law school and assist you with the law school application process.

(2) Create a support system. You will go through so many changes before, during, and after law school such that a good support system could make or break your success. If it wasn’t for my parents, brother, family, and friends I know that I would not have been able to survive law school.

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The following op-ed by first-year FIU Law student Frandley Julien, Haitian leaders avoid root problems, originally appeared in The Sun Sentinel on September 30, 2012.

Those who follow Haitian politics closely have noticed that, for the last 25 years, no government has matched the current team’s ability to come up with innovative ideas, or their eagerness to achieve quick results. However, one’s enthusiasm is quickly dampened upon the realization that no other government has had so little institutional knowledge either.

Therefore, the current government’s entrepreneurial spirit, uplifting at first, may mean more trouble for the country if its innovative drive is unleashed with little respect for the institutions, and without a clear understanding of what it would take to achieve irreversible democratic, economic and social progress.

The current government approaches Haiti’s challenges as if it were a new country, with no history or antecedents. Everybody agrees Haiti has a great potential for tourism, that its hard-working people could constitute the ideal workforce for scores of local and foreign businesses.

But what the government fails to realize is that until Duvalier’s departure, thousands of tourists were visiting Haiti on a weekly basis, that all the jobs we are trying to attract, we had them until then. Why did these enterprises leave? Why did the tourists stop visiting us? The answer is a no-brainer: political instability and insecurity.

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Andrea Franklin, 3L, recently wrote an article published in Law360 along with co-author Luis Perez, a shareholder in Akerman Senterfitt’s Miami office. The article, “Interpreting Section 1782 Post-Intel,” was a two-part series analyzing Section 1782 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Intel Corp. v Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Section 1782 provides the basic requirements and parameters for interested parties seeking information located in the United States for use in foreign proceedings, and has had varied judicial interpretations in the U.S.

It all began when Franklin’s international law professor assigned an annotated summary of an article her roommate’s dad coincidentally wrote. She had never met Luis Perez. All she knew was that Mr. Perez was an international attorney and that he had published an article in FIU’s Law Review. After finally meeting him, she sent him the summary she wrote and offered to help him with research for his next publication.

Eventually, she began sending him memorandums regarding her research findings. After about three weeks, Mr. Perez suggested she start writing a draft for him to review. Upon reviewing a few drafts, Mr. Perez sent her an email to inform her that he would name her as his co-author.

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