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The beauty of moot court lawyering
S M Masum Billah
Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) organised a virtual moot court competition on 20-23 August 2020, addressing the issue of constitutional law, dedicated after the name of none else than Prof Shah Alam, one of our greatest law teachers, a constitutionalist, and importantly a person savant par excellence, and a gentleman to the core. During the ongoing pandemic situation, ELCOP came up with the idea of mooting competition in order to show respect to its great friend Prof Alam in his life time to break the myth that Bangladesh has learned nothing to respect its fertile sons. With this essay too, we all wish an early recovery of Prof Alam.
To begin with an anecdotal mode, I was thinking about what mooting could mean in this disturbing time. Is it an emerging source of hope? Or could we say for an entrapped situation that mooting is a practice to prevent the law students from “mottu”- ing (the tendency of gaining weight)! Jokes apart, mooting had been an integral part of instructions in the Inns and Oxbridge since early days. In that sense, ELCOP’s mooting venture is to re-shine this practice and make a re-discovery of this ancient treasure of legal education. Thus, you can catch the chord of the famous song from 3 Idiots : “Give me some sunshine, give me some rain, give me another chance, I wanna grow up once again”. Mooting is a practice of shadowing the court culture and growing up with the arts and styles of law. A mooting team consists of 3 Idiots by the way! The conception of mooting embraces some criticisms having valuable humility, yet if we want to see our law students grown up, we can hardly ignore its necessity as a mode of smart law teaching.﻿
Law is a large canvass, full of mystery, controversy and contradiction. It often bewilders us. But the paradox is the beauty of the law. Remember Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself?Very well then, I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes)” – replies the law.
Lawyers and law are actively rewriting our world. Our legal education defines the class of lawyers and tests the merit of our laws. OW Holmes, a great American Judge pithily says that the role of legal education is not merely to teach law or make lawyers, it is to teach law grandly and to produce great lawyers. For a moment, let us take the term, “law and lawyering”and by that way, mooting (lawyering in a miniature form) as an all-embracing idea, where it includes, the judges, lawyers, academics, lawmakers, talk-showers and the like as characters. From this vantage point, even musicians are lawyers – people’s advocate , as coined by the US Folklorist Alan Lomax, who sees music as an instrument of fashioning social justice . Prof Mizanur Rahman would say that mooting is a rebellious lawyer in the making! I am indicating the need for lawyering for human dignity, instead of merely litigious lawyering.
Being a lawyer is a joy. We have many joys in life, being a mooter is an immediate joy, and being a lawyer is an ultimate joy. It gives you a great deal of happiness. When I say happiness, I remember the pledge of the US Declaration of Independence, “in pursuit of happiness”. I translate it as “ shukh dabrania ” (moving after happiness) and in Tagore’s world it’s known as “ shukher o shondhane jao ”. But shukh (includes peace) does not take place automatically. Bangabandhu, the greatest son of our soil, incidentally a law student at Dhaka University, had advocated for our nation’s emancipation. However, what suffering he had sustained and what a tragedy he had to embrace! He said once:“ ami mara gele amar kobore ekta tiner chonga rekhe dish, ei ekta lok ekta tin-er chonga haat-e niye rajnitite eshechilo, ebong sarajibon ei tin-er chongai Bangali, Bangali korei mara gelo ” (when I would die, place a tin-made mike beside my gravestone so that people could say that the man came to politics with a tin-made mike in hand, and even ended along with itadvocating for the rights of the Bengalis). Can you imagine his level of dedication for the cause of the people, although he sounded a bit ironic!
I may sound unfocused. Even then, what I mean is studying, leading, mooting, lawyering and judging – all entail a beauty of performing and a promise for sacrifice. Being inspired by the idea of Prof Nicole Casarez, an US Attorney, I note three reasons for that:
Firstly , the law is an enormous world of intellectual hunt. You get to apply your mind every day. It asks us how to speak and read. I wonder whether at all we learned to read properly at our law schools. To be a lawyer, we need to develop the discipline for reading the legal sources wisely. Mooting trains us how to formulate and present arguments. It makes us a better reader , a better writer and a better thinker.
Secondly , if you are a mooter (a lawyer in a miniature form), law people will treat you with respect. It gives you an excuse to give a Facebook status, post a LinkedIn link, adds a point to your resume. It gives you a scope to say: “Alhamdulillah”, as I see the recent trend in heralding good news on Facebook. A successful mooter, however, may not end up becoming a good lawyer. You need to have passion, emotion and a “heart” that “bleeds for the people”–to use Justice BB Roy Chowdhury’s poignant phrase in the famous Dr. Mohiuddin Farooque (1997).Otherwise, after your death, people may write at your epitaph: “Here lies a lawyer who was also a good mooter , and probably an honest man!”
This takes us to my third point about doing a bit pro bono lawyering . That’s the most important way that law makes us happy. American Justice Ginsburgonce said: “I can say that in my life as a lawyer, I gained greater satisfaction from things I wasn’t paid to do than what I got a paycheck for.”
We have a legal system and many people cynically say that it is destined to penalise the poor. This is a crisis of our legal system. But what to do? It’s easy to talk about the need for law reform and to put a blame on the politicians. The government needs a reform proposal to the extent a fish needs a bi-cycle. But what about our individual responsibility to work for justice? We hardly can deny that lawyers, legal institutions, law schools run our justice system as public defenders, law technicians and law-graduate suppliers. To that end, ELCOP has not come to be a footnote to our law teaching, rather it has emerged as a caravan in advancing the idea of “lawyering with the poor is lawyering for justice”.
Lastly, I note that arguing before a virtual moot court may pose many challenges. We may not be able to see you physically but will feel you from the heart. It thus will also be a testing ground whether our law has been an effective instrument as a means of communication. I urge you to condone our possible pitfalls in organising the programme shaped by technological sophistication. We are still learning. I congratulate all the participating teams both of memorial and oral rounds. Mooting is not a replacement of vice with virtue, rather it’s a training of translating the legal-vices into common good. Prof Alam’s law teaching entwins moral heft and analytic clarity in that respect. Prof Alam’s vision of lawyering, therefore, inspires us pervasively. It prompts us to reinterpret our thoughts so that we can see the world’s dawn and dusk afresh. Let our mooting be a lovely pretext for our mental boosting.
THE WRITER TEACHES LAW AT JAGANNATH UNIVERSITY, DHAKA AND HOLDS A PhD FROM VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON. THE WRITE UP IS A MODIFIED VERSION OF THE WRITER’S ADDRESS AT THE 1ST PROFESSOR SHAH ALAM VIRTUAL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW MOOT COMPETITION, ELCOP, DHAKA, 21-23 AUGUST 2020.
To be a lawyer, we need to develop the discipline for reading the legal sources wisely. Mooting trains us how to formulate and present arguments. It makes us a better reader, a better writer and a better thinker. ﻿