The University of Texas School of Law interscholastic team won the national championship in the 2011 Uvaldo Herrera National Moot Court Competition. Team members Anthony Arguijo, ’11; Sergio Davila, ’11; and Omar Ochoa, ’11, beat Arizona State University in the final round of the competition to win the championship. The team also won the award for best respondent’s brief. Ochoa and Arguijo are also editor in chief and managing editor, respectively, of the Texas Law Review.
The Uvaldo Herrera Moot Court team is coached by Shalla Santos, ’06, staff attorney for Justice Bob Pemberton of the Third Court of Appeals of Texas. This is the second time Santos has coached the team to a national championship. As a law student, she won a national championship in the 2006 Giles Sutherland Rich Intellectual Property Moot Court competition.
The 2011 Uvaldo Herrera Moot Court Competition National Championship team, clockwise from lower left: Coach Shalla Santos, '06; Omar Ochoa, '11; Sergio Davila, '11; and Anthony Arguijo, '11.
Hosted by the Hispanic National Bar Association, the competition was held March 9–12, 2011, in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s problem involved an immigration and equal protection case based on Flores-Villar v. United States (a case currently pending before the United States Supreme Court). The issues were whether a statute governing conferral of citizenship that contains more stringent requirements for unmarried citizen fathers than unmarried citizen mothers violates equal protection, and whether the Supreme Court can remedy any such violation by granting citizenship.
Contact: Cheryl Brandt, associate director, Advocacy Program, 512-232-1257, cbrandt@law.utexas.edu.