A MOOT COURT: RATIONING HEALTH CARE
Photos © Carol H. Feeley
When a massive, global outbreak of a deadly form of “Simian” flu hits the United States in the summer of 2020, a shortfall of vaccine puts the country in a panic and pressures Congress into passing a law that gives priority to individuals at risk. There is no reference to citizenship, a silence that the Arizona state legislature interprets as a grant to impose its own citizenship-based priority scheme, restricting access to vaccines for non-citizens. A group—consisting of non-citizen pregnant women, parents with young children, and resident aliens—brings a class action lawsuit challenging the law. Click here to read the hypothetical.
Morrison v. Obasanjo was argued by distinguished legal scholars and 2010 Jennings faculty members Nina Pillard, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, and Kenneth W. Starr, Dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.
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This moot court was argued before a panel of equally distinguished “judges,” including:
The Honorable Guido Calabresi, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Political Science, Yale University
Michael A. Fitts, Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
The Honorable Brett Kavanaugh, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The Honorable Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge of the State of New York (Ret.), Of Counsel, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
The Honorable Timothy Lewis, Counsel at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis and former Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
The Honorable Marjorie O. Rendell, First Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
The Honorable Barry R. Schaller, Justice (retired), Connecticut Supreme Court
The Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter, Judge, United States Court Appeals for Third Circuit
Jan Ting, Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Nina Pillard has been a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center since 1997, where she teaches civil procedure, constitutional law, American and transnational legal theory, and various labor and employment courses. Pillard had litigated more than twenty-five cases before the Supreme Court, both before and during her time at Georgetown. During the Clinton Administration, she was Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, in the Department of Justice. She is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School.
Kenneth W. Starr is Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law in California. In June he will become President of Baylor University. Starr is also Of Counsel to the Law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, LLP. He has served as Counselor to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and Independent Counsel for five investigations. As Solicitor General, he argued twenty-five cases before the Supreme Court. He earned a BA from George Washington University, an MA from Brown University, and is a graduate of Duke Law School.
