Dear CUNY Law Community,
The CUNY Law Moot Court team joins our fellow student groups in expressing our firm solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives, BLSA, and the ongoing fight against police violence and systemic racism in all its forms. We mourn Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and all victims, named and unnamed, of state-sanctioned brutality and violence against Black bodies and Black lives.
We recognize that the law as an institution is inherently anti-Black and racist, along with misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and classist. The vicious and violent white supremacy and oppression that characterizes all of American history remains embedded in our laws and legal structures and has allowed for rampant abuse of power and extrajudicial killings of Black people by law enforcement officials, the very people tasked with protecting our communities. As law students preparing to become attorneys and advocates, we state unequivocally that Black Lives Matter and we commit to working alongside Black-led organizations and movements to combat anti-Blackness at CUNY Law School, in the legal profession, in New York City, and throughout the country.
As CUNY Law’s Moot Court team, we are taking this moment to reflect on how we can work to dismantle anti-Blackness in the sphere directly within our influence. Many aspects of participation in Moot Court, and indeed legal practice, are rooted in anti-Blackness, from white-centered notions of professionalism during oral argument and in court to insistence on strict adherence to archaic legal mechanisms over more authentic and impassioned advocacy in written briefs. We will explore avenues through which we can address these functional inequities through our programming this upcoming year, centering the experiences of Black attorneys and alumni as we do so.
More immediately, we understand the toll that participating in protests at the frontlines, listening to the news, exerting energy in constant and emotionally laborious conversations about anti-Blackness, and grappling with the immense grief that comes with each new case of police brutality has on students, especially Black students, who are participating in Moot Court’s Summer Competition against the backdrop of the stressful COVID-19 pandemic. We encourage students who are having difficulty writing their briefs to reach out to the Summer Competition Chair at cunymootcourt@gmail.com. To the best of our ability, we will work with students to ensure that everyone who wishes to participate in the Competition is able to do so.
As our fellow student organizations have stated, now is the time to actively reflect on what we’ve been doing and understand that we need to do better. CUNY Moot Court’s Executive Board will continue to #saytheirnames, listen to and amplify Black voices, and take part in the necessary introspection required to commit both ourselves and the entire Moot Court team to sincere and sustained anti-racist work in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
Sincerely,
CUNY Law Moot Court Executive Board 2020-2021