Exercise Four Assignment

As previously indicated, I have provided an abbreviated record for a case in which a custodial parent is seeking permission to relocate (“Materials submitted to Court”). Groups will either a) represent one of the parents, providing a brief and arguing the case or b) serve as the trial judges, asking questions during the argument and writing an opinion.

 Taking into account any preferences provided to me by 5 pm Friday March 28, I will assign teams to one of these three roles, and post /email that table over the weekend.

There are 13 groups for exercise four, which does not divide evenly by three. Therefore one trial will be repeated before two different panels of judges. That is, there will be three teams representing the mother (one of which will argue twice) and three teams representing the father  (one of which will argue twice) and four teams serving as judges. (For the litigants, one team member should be chosen to present the argument; for the judicial panels all team members should be prepared to listen and ask questions.) If you are willing to be one of the teams that argues twice, let me know when you make your choices. If there are insufficient volunteers, two groups will be assigned the opportunity to hone their arguments in a second mini-trial. As always, I will try to honor choices but cannot guarantee it, especially here.

The briefs will be due by 5 pm on April 10. You need only submit the “argument” section of the brief, which should be approximately three-five pages. You should not do any outside research beyond the materials assigned for this course.  The mini-trials will take place, seriatim, during class on April 11; the judicial opinions will be due by April 15^th.

We will defer class discussion of the portion of assignment 19 dealing with relocation until the April 11 class.