Baylor's Moot Court Team Shines in Regional Competition
Baylor's victorious Moot Court team included (left to right) Emma Lemek, Marissa Ramos, Sam Joyce, Mark McGraw (team advisor), Noah Aune, Shriya Vidhyaprakash and Julia Mendes. Photo credit: Mark McGraw
On March 28-29, 2025, undergraduate students from Baylor University took part in the Eugene Scassa Mock Organization of American States (ESMOAS) Program’s Tenth Inter-American Court of Human Rights Moot Court (IACHR) Competition, held at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. A five-judge panel heard arguments in preliminary and tournament rounds presented by teams from regional universities.
Teams of two contestants argued alternately as State and Petitioner in a hypothetical case involving issues of transnational gang violence, narcotrafficking, immigration, national sovereignty, border security, and human rights. The teams cited articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, as well as judgments from other international and national courts, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Court’s prior decisions in their arguments.
Baylor’s Julia Mendes (senior, international studies major from Hudson, New Hampshire) and Shriya Vidhyaprakash (junior, economics major from Dallas, Texas) won the Outstanding Team award, as well as the award for Outstanding Legal Team Research and Writing. Vidhyaprakash also won the award for Outstanding Legal Memorial as Petitioner, while Mendes won the Distinguished Legal Memorial for the State. Sam Joyce (senior, international studies major from Chicago, Illinois) took the award for Distinguished Legal Memorial – Petitioner, concluding a brilliant four-year Moot Court career that includes having won multiple awards.
Other Baylor participants were Noah Aune (senior, political science major from San Antonio, Texas), Marissa Ramos (junior, political science major from Houston, Texas), and Emma Lemek (sophomore, psychology, Wilbraham, Massachusetts),
The team is advised by Dr. Mark McGraw, lecturer in Spanish in the Department of Modern Language and Cultures in the College of Arts & Sciences, and was supported by instruction and advice in legal argumentation and research by Professors Brian Serr and Chris Galeczka of the Baylor School of Law.
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