The Grand Final of the 16th annual Bucerius Common Law Moot took place in the Moot Court on Monday, 13 June, and proved to be a feast of US constitutional contestation. The competition is run each year by the Foreign Language Communication Programme and gives first- and second-year students a chance to moot competitively in English on a topical legal issue.
This year’s topic: Row v Wade
The subject of this year’s moot was the highly controversial leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion that overturned the landmark abortion rights case Roe v Wade, thereby curtailing a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy.
Appellant: A women’s reproductive health centre
Acting for the appellant, a women’s reproductive health centre, were senior counsel Nikolaos Massuras and his very able junior Baran Özdemir. The judges were impressed with the fluency and persuasiveness of counsel for the appellant’s submissions, in which they eloquently argued for a right to an abortion to be inferred from the text and context of the US constitution. They also put forward compelling arguments around stare decisis, the common-law principle that provides that settled decisions such as Roe v Wade should be left undisturbed.
Respondent: State of Mississippi and others
The respondents, representing the state of Mississippi and a number of other states, was represented by senior counsel Jula Rügemer and junior counsel Max Klinke. Both were steadfast in their view that a right to an abortion was not deeply rooted in US society and traditions, and that the right to privacy did not extend to the right to terminate a pregnancy.
