Each year, the Byron White Center’s Marshall-Brennan Project chapter partners a select group of Colorado Law students (teaching fellows) with public school teachers in underserved high schools to teach a course about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The project also enables the high school students to participate in state and national moot court competitions.
This past year, six of the high school students participating in the competition—Beth Anderson, Yael Sanchez, Zail Acosta, Alicia Rodriguez Juarez, Kenika Hiromi Hicks, and Jonathan Garcia Valencia—qualified for the National Marshall-Brennan Moot Court Competition, which took place at American University in Washington, D.C. in April. The six high school students were all coached by Colorado Law students involved in the Marshall-Brennan Project—Deep Badhesha ('20) and Samantha Silverberg ('20). More than 100 competitors from states around the country came to the competition.
For the first time in the program’s history, three of the students that qualified for the national competition--Beth Anderson (9th grade, Pomona High School), Yael Sanchez (11th grade, Global Leadership Academy), and Zail Acosta (11th grade, Strive Prep Rise)--made it to the semi-finals, more than any other law school-coached group of students in the nation.
Zail Acosta won the competition as the best oralist representing the petitioner, Colorado’s first time winning a best oralist prize.
The topic of the competition’s argument centered around free speech and searches and seizures in schools.
Zail Acosta, winner of best oralist representing the petitioner, poses with Senior Judge Eric T. Washington,
District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and Fernando Laguarda, Director of Law & Government Program,
American University’s Washington College of Law.