Since 1952, Kirkwood Moot Court has been the major moot court activity at Stanford Law School, offering students the opportunity to brief and argue a real case before a hypothetical U.S. Supreme Court. The competition is named for Marion Rice Kirkwood, who served as an SLS faculty member from 1912 to 1922 and as dean of the law school from 1923 to 1945.

The final round of the 2025 competition, held February 7, featured Jonathan Artal and Leo Rassieur, both JD ’25, against Rachel Blatt and Harrison Hurt, both JD ’26. Artal and Rassieur won awards for Best Brief and Best Team Overall, while Artal earned the prize for Best Oral Argument.

The annual competition begins with 20 teams of two students, half assigned to argue on behalf of petitioner and half for respondent. Successive elimination rounds winnow the group down to the final two teams. 

This year’s judges were Justice Goodwin Liu of the Supreme Court of California, Judge Patrick J. Butamay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Jill A. Pryor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The students were asked to brief and argue U.S. v. Chatrie, 107 F.4th 319 (4th Cir. 2024), which concerned Google’s production of location information in response to the government’s geofence inquiry that led to the discovery of evidence against the defendant. A geofence is a virtual “perimeter” or “fence” around a given geographic feature.

The main issue in the case was whether the government’s use of a geofence inquiry was an unconstitutional search under the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, if the government’s use of a geofence inquiry was an unconstitutional search, was the evidence obtained as a result of the search nonetheless admissible under the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule?

“I was definitely nervous leading up to the finals, but in the moment, when arguing, I oddly felt fairly calm,” says Rassieur, who, following graduation, will be an appellate litigation fellow at the D.C. Solicitor General’s office, followed by two federal court clerkships. “I got the great advice to treat oral argument as a conversation between me and the judges, so I wasn’t as worried about defending my position as much as just listening to the judges and making sure I understood where they were coming from.”

Artal describes a similar dynamic: “At the end of the day, it’s just a conversation with really smart, really curious people,” he says. “The judges were grappling with questions that had challenged us for months, so I didn’t want to claim to them that the answers were obvious. I wanted to acknowledge our argument’s weak points and give my pitch for why they shouldn’t carry the day.” Artal will join law firm Williams & Connolly for a year, followed by two federal clerkships. He adds that his Best Oral Argument award “belongs as well to Leo, who helped me workshop my answers, and to all the faculty and friends who mooted us and helped us refine our responses.”

Finalist Harrison Hurt also calls out the support he and his teammate, Rachel Blatt, received from faculty and friends: “I found the oral argument portion of the competition most challenging, because we don’t get many other opportunities to practice oratorical skills in law school,” he says. “Fortunately, we had a lot of help from people like the Moot Court instructors, Randee Fenner and Lisa Pearson, as well as faculty like Orin Kerr, Robert Weisberg, and Richard Salgado. We also benefited tremendously from practicing with our fellow competitors and even friends outside of the competition.”

Next year, Hurt and Blatt plan to serve on the Moot Court Student Board, which helps to run the competition. “We’re excited to pay forward all the support we received this year and pass on what we’ve learned to next year’s competitors,” Blatt says.

Students who received awards in the preliminary rounds were: Tommy Archibald and Spencer Segal, both JD ’25, for Best Oral Argument; Kelsea Jeon, JD ’25, and Brian Xu, JD ’26, for Best Petitioner’s Brief; and Sophia  Caldera and Jacqueline Lewittes, both JD ’25, for Best Respondent’s Brief.