Overview
On April 18, 2025, Ryan Jacobson, was selected to preside over Chicago-Kent’s “Charles Evans Hughes Moot Court Competition.” First-year students at Chicago-Kent participate in oral arguments as part of their required Legal Writing curriculum. The annual competition honors Charles Evans Hughes -- an American politician, academic, and jurist who served as the 11th Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941.
The law students debated whether (1) a high school student’s off-campus, online speech was subject to regulation under Supreme Court precedent and related authority, and (2) whether the student’s harsh critique of her school’s anti-cell phone policy posed a foreseeable risk of disrupting the learning process.
Ryan relied on his more than twenty-five years as a prominent media lawyer and free speech advocate. He fired pointed questions and hypotheticals to the students to give them a real-life taste of the appellate process. “The law students were prepared, poised, and rather impressive,” Ryan said. “This generation of future lawyers have a bright future ahead of them; maybe some will dedicate their careers to safeguarding our delicate, First Amendments freedoms in this ever-changing world.”
