Mooting Question for Respondents

I have a mooting competition in a week and was not sure of some of the issues to talk about. Anyone who helps, I would be grateful
PM me for the full question, as it is long.

For drug users, intoxication to be present is a must. What about if a drug is contaminated? Could Causation issues come into play, factual and Legal. This includes cases such as Pagett and White. Intervening Acts and the thin skull rule ?
As for the Defendant, she is charged with manslaughter. The victim's self injection does not matter, as they were friends and both heroin addicts.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction. Adriana is now appealing to the House of
Lords on the following points of law:
1. That the trial judge failed to direct the jury as to the nature of the unlawful act
required for constructive manslaughter; and on the evidence, there was no
unlawful act;
2. That if there was an unlawful act either of supplying a controlled drug under
s.4(1) Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, or of unlawfully and maliciously
administering or causing to be administered a noxious thing, contrary to s.23
Offences Against the Person Act 1861, the victim’s own free, deliberate and
informed act of self-injection relieved the defendant of liability for the death.

Any help or advice is much appreciated PM me for any other info.

When you say a mooting competition, is this extra-curricular? Mooting competitions are a contest of both your oral advocacy ability and your ability to plan and shape a persuasive answer. Shaping that answer is a job for you and your partner - getting someone to help you with your answer for a contest is self-evidently unreasonable and is most likely against the rules. I trust, and hope, that no-one on TSR will assist you in this unless they are certain that you are behaving ethically and within the rules.

I ask if it's extra-curricular because whereas a moot in your classes is essentially formative, extra-curricular mooting contests are also a chance for law students to show their ability to create a persuasive argument, and wins are considered a valuable accomplishment for a budding barrister or solicitor-advocate's CV. Put simply, getting someone to help you with an in-class moot is only cheating yourself, but getting help in an actual competition will potentially cheat someone else out of winning.

I have no intention of cheating, know what I am supposed to say, but just want to make sure that it's right !
Thanks for your concern anyways

You didn't actually answer Fysidiko's question. Is this for an extracurricular or curricular moot?

It is a curricular moot

What do you have so far?

When you say a mooting competition, is this extra-curricular? Mooting competitions are a contest of both your oral advocacy ability and your ability to plan and shape a persuasive answer. Shaping that answer is a job for you and your partner - getting someone to help you with your answer for a contest is self-evidently unreasonable and is most likely against the rules. I trust, and hope, that no-one on TSR will assist you in this unless they are certain that you are behaving ethically and within the rules.

I ask if it's extra-curricular because whereas a moot in your classes is essentially formative, extra-curricular mooting contests are also a chance for law students to show their ability to create a persuasive argument, and wins are considered a valuable accomplishment for a budding barrister or solicitor-advocate's CV. Put simply, getting someone to help you with an in-class moot is only cheating yourself, but getting help in an actual competition will potentially cheat someone else out of winning.

I wonder if this is a bit harsh. I can't see anything unethical about seeking advice and being pointed in the right direction.

OP is still going to have to analyse cases, draft a skeleton, make submissions and respond to judicial intervention. It's a little pernickety to say that no assistance whatsoever should be rendered.

I wonder if this is a bit harsh. I can't see anything unethical about seeking advice and being pointed in the right direction.

OP is still going to have to analyse cases, draft a skeleton, make submissions and respond to judicial intervention. It's a little pernickety to say that no assistance whatsoever should be rendered.

I wonder if this is a bit harsh. I can't see anything unethical about seeking advice and being pointed in the right direction.

OP is still going to have to analyse cases, draft a skeleton, make submissions and respond to judicial intervention. It's a little pernickety to say that no assistance whatsoever should be rendered.

I think it is harsh A little piece of advice wouldnt do harm...

I agree with this. I'm struggling at the minute to see the difference between advice and guidance given for a moot and advice and guidance given for an assessed peice of written coursework, where assessment offences of collusion come into play. Everyone seems happy to help for the latter but now the moot police have decided that different rules apply for the former. I didn't get the impression that the OP was asking anyone to write the argument.

Made some notes on cases etc. Would you mind if I sent it to you via PM to have a look? Thanks in ad

I like to think that people wouldn't help with assessed written coursework either - and my experience has been that generally when it has been clear that help is being sought with assessed coursework people have not offered any meaningful assistance. Frankly in the case of assessed work there is no grey area - the piece is meant to be the candidate's unassisted work. If you set out to help someone then if you succeed you are knowingly helping them to break the rules to gain an advantage - in other words to cheat. While it is laudable to want to help people, and I am certainly no stranger to the temptation to demonstrate my knowledge by trying to give them something insightful, there is no way in which giving someone assistance on assessed work is ethically justifiable.

By your definition every time one of my classmates asked me to discuss their (extra-curricular) moot problem or practised their submissions with me I would be guilty of cheating. I see your point about coursweork but there are strict guidelines on academic dishonesty. I haven't seen anything that would forbid me from assisting in the way I have described in any mooting competition rules.

I'm afraid that this isn't going to be a particularly popular position, but my personal opinion would be that it is not fair. The questions I would ask, I think, are simply these:
1) Is this contest/essay meant to be an assessment of my personal ability (either alone or in a team)?
2) Am I getting a benefit from someone else's involvement that I would not have received had they not been involved?
If those two questions are answered in the affirmative then I would personally not be comfortable receiving the help. In assessing cheating there is perhaps a third criterion - dishonesty - that comes into play, and the appropriate question might then be whether or not the candidate would be happy to declare at the beginning of the contest the help that they have received. In fact, that would perhaps be the fairest way to approach this if there is any uncertainty: at the opening of the moot give your opponents details of any help you have received. A competitor who has done nothing unreasonable would have nothing to fear from that, except perhaps being seen as unusually moral; if the opposition does not agree that it is fair they could object and the judge could resolve the question.

But mooting is a test of your mooting ability. If someone is able and resourceful enough to seek advice and can persuade the knowledgeable and intelligent to advise them then I'd say they're acting perfectly sensibly and not immorally.

A moot is designed - to quote from the Middle Temple moot contest literature - to test the "ability to marshal an argument, and present it clearly and coherently". I would argue that it is not intended to be a test of which candidate has the most intelligent friends or the best network of contacts. If those factors are allowed to impinge on the contest then they potentially prejudice the competition against a candidate who is more articulate and legally more capable, but who does not have such a network. That is not fair. It may be sensible for a competitor who wants to win to seek any help he can get, and it might not be dishonest or immoral - these are personal questions. But it is not fair.

I suggest you reflect on what 'marshalling an argument' does and doesn't entail.

Mooting competitions often have long, detailed and explicit rules. These rules are written by lawyers. If they wished to prevent the mischief you seem to believe should be prevented, then this would be set out clearly in these rules. In my experience I have not come across any such 'anti-discussion' provisions. It is stretching a point to shoehorn such an implication into the phrase "to test the ability to marshal an argument, and present it clearly and coherently". If it goes against your personal moral code to assist people with their mooting problems then it is your prerogative not to assist. However, when you leap from that position to the assertion that assistance renders the competition unfair, I'm afraid you fall and fail.

"Marshalling an argument", I would suggest, would involve steps including:
-Determining the basic issues;
-Identifying the case law on those issues;
-Developing arguments to distinguish particular cases or lines of reasoning, or to bring more favourable reasoning within the argument;
-Identifying counter-arguments and preparing responses to them.

If I am correct in saying that those are parts of "marshalling an argument" then they are criteria on which the advocate, personally, is being judged. If they were in fact performed by someone else then that judgement is surely prejudiced.

I think that there is a difficulty in arguing that the fact that the rules do not seek to explicitly prohibit soliciting help shows that the practice is not unfair. First, the terms are not synonymous - a practice can be unfair without being prohibited. Second, the rules must take into account the practical reality, whereas a discussion of what is or is not unfair is an abstract, theoretical discussion. A rule against soliciting help would be unenforceable. That does not mean that a person who has had assistance in preparing his submissions has not behaved unfairly.

As an aside, if you are indeed suggesting that anything that is not prohibited by the rules is fair, would you not object if junior counsel for the appellant had written and rehearsed his speech with help from a practising barrister or advocate? In that situation there could potentially be very little of the assessment that in fact reflected the capability of the participant. Yes, it is an extreme case, and I don't mean to claim that you would see no problem with counsel merely reading off speeches prepared by professionals, but if that is not acceptable (even if it is not prohibited in the rules) why is it acceptable when the help is received from another, potentially much more capable, student? Where is the line drawn?