New York Law School Hosts 30th Annual Robert F. Wagner National Labor and Employment Law Moot Court Competition

Final Round to Be Webcast 2 p.m. Sunday, March 19 at http://www.nyls.edu/wagner

NEW YORK, March 15, 2006 --- Law students representing 38 schools from every region of the country are converging on New York Law School for the start of the 30th Annual Robert F. Wagner National Labor and Employment Law Moot Court Competition. Preliminary rounds start on Thursday, March 16. The Final Round, which is open to the public, will be held Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m. in the Stiefel Reading Room. The Law School is located at 47 Worth Street in lower Manhattan. The Final Round will be Webcast live from New York Law School’s Web site at http://www.nyls.edu/wagner.

Prior to the Final Round, a reception in honor of the Final Round Justices will be held at 12 noon in the Law School’s Wellington Conference Center, thanks to the generosity of the firm Jackson Lewis LLP.

The Final Round bench of distinguished jurists includes: the Honorable Julia Smith Gibbons, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; the Honorable Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; the Honorable Jane Roth, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; the Honorable Wilma B. Liebman, Board Member, National Labor Relations Board; and the Honorable Richard A. Matasar, Dean and President, New York Law School.

The students in this year’s competition will test their written and oral advocacy skills by arguing a moot case arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the fictitious case, two former employees of Shop-n-Bag, Inc., George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld, file separate employment discrimination suits against the company; Costanza claiming that he was a victim of religious discrimination for his observance of “Festivus,” and Seinfeld alleging that he was a victim of retaliation based on his support of Costanza’s rights and his opposition to Shop-n-Bag’s supposedly unlawful practices.

Founded at New York Law School, the Wagner Competition is run entirely by students who author the fact pattern and the bench brief; score the written part of the competition; and organize the extensive series of oral rounds judged by distinguished practitioners and members of the bench. This year’s competition was organized by members of the New York Law School Moot Court Association, led by:

• Kayla Rosenberg and Zhanna Ziering
  Competition Co-Chairs
• Randi Berman and Christina Zervoudakis
  Authors of the Fact Pattern and Bench Brief

Professor Carlin Meyer was the faculty advisor for the fact pattern. The Honorable Gerald Lebovits, Adjunct Professor of Law, is the faculty advisor to the Moot Court Association.

The Wagner Competition is named in honor of the Law School's distinguished alumnus, United States Senator Robert F. Wagner, who graduated from New York Law School in 1900. During his four consecutive terms in the Senate (1926–1949), Wagner authored sweeping legislation that dramatically changed the American social and economic landscape. His two greatest legislative achievements occurred in 1935 with the passage of the Social Security Act to provide old-age pensions to Americans, and the National Labor Relations Act to guarantee labor's right to organize and bargain collectively.

ABOUT NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL:

Founded in 1891, New York Law School is the second oldest independent law school in the United States. Drawing on its location near the centers of law, government, and finance in New York City, its faculty of noted and prolific scholars has built the school’s curricular strength in the areas of tax law, labor and employment law, civil and human rights law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and interdisciplinary fields such as legal history and legal ethics. New York Law School has more than 11,000 graduates and enrolls some 1500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. program. It is one of only two law schools in the metropolitan area to offer the Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Tax Law.