After months of writing drafts, nine University Law students have successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear Watson v. United States, a case they have been working on since the beginning of the fall semester.
The students are participants in the University's first Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, a course run by Law Prof. Dan Ortiz and attorneys David Goldberg and Mark Stancil.
"The goals were to give a small group of students a very intense experience where they would get a lot of supervision and hone their legal skills at the highest level of legal practice," Ortiz said.
As a part of the course, the students began reviewing cases from lower circuit courts during the summer and petitioned the Supreme Court to hear five different cases.
Though the Supreme Court agrees to hear less than one percent of petitioned cases, in early March the justices agreed to hear one of the clinic's cases, Watson v. United States.
In Watson v. United States, a case that originated in Louisiana in the Fifth Circuit Court, defendant Michael Watson was accused of using a firearm in a drug trafficking incident.
"He basically received a firearm in exchange for drugs and so the question is, by receiving a firearm, was he using it?" third-year Law student Matt Madden said.
Though the Fifth Circuit Court found Watson guilty of using the weapon, other circuit courts would have claimed that simply receiving the firearm did not mean he had used it, according to Madden.
"The conclusions [the Supreme Court justices] reach on the federal decision will then affect any future cases that follow," Madden said.
According to Madden, the students are now working on an opening brief, which will further explain the merits of Watson's argument to the Supreme Court.
The case will be presented in October, and although the current clinic participants will have already graduated, the next group of students will help prepare the attorney defending Watson's argument.
Ortiz said he has found the students to be very motivated and competent in working on the case.
"This is something that you can't plan your own schedule around," Ortiz said. "Sometimes you have only 10 days to respond to the Court's decision, and the students have been willing to put everything else aside to work on the case."
According to third-year University Law student Khang Tran, working on Watson's case has helped him improve his writing skills and has "given [him] a great insight on how the Court works"
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