The Wrong Side

Written By: Emily Goetz and Isaiah Feggins

In recent years, the Judicial branch has been growing at a rapid pace. With this fast pace growth, the chance for mistakes has also grown. This year, a judicial team from the Hershey delegation was unfortunate enough to endure the results of one such mistake.

The team is made up of two first years, Vince Andrews-Newhouse and Luke Goldstein, who prepared their argument in defense of the Mother and Hospital but were actually supposed to defend the CYS and Singer. This debacle started back in January. Andrews-Newhouse and Goldstein were told by their advisor that they were assigned to defend the Hospital and Mother’s side of the case and based their whole arguments on this. When asked, Andrews-Newhouse claimed that he was absent at a later meeting when one of their advisors told Goldstein the correct the argument to the other side who promptly forgot it. Therefore the mistake was never corrected and Andrews-Newhouse and Goldstein were doomed to this terrible fate.

It wasn’t until Thursday night, an hour or so before preliminary arguments at the hotel when the two received their lanyards and name tags and saw the positions given underneath their names reading “CYS and Singer”. The team immediately went to talk with their advisors who apologized profusely and were very helpful. There was nothing anyone could do, they had to completely scratch everything they had already done. Andrews-Newhouse’s reaction was absolute shock followed by panic at what they were going to have to do. The two spent the remainder of Thursday completely rewriting their arguments. Goldstein thought it was easier because he was now arguing for the side that he thought was right. Andrews-Newhouse, on the other hand, found it more difficult because the two now had to comb through new case law and look at the case a whole different way in order to make a good argument.

Goldstein and Andrews-Newhouse explained to the justices that their advisors had mixed up the two cases and it still didn't do the two delegates any justice. Goldstein ended up doing the brief right which gave the two a little bump in their score, but overall it wasn't a good outcome. Hopefully Goldstein and Andrews-Newhouse will have had enough time to prepare better.