U.VA. Law Students Help Win a Case by Arguing the Value of Ordinary Speech

CHARLOTTESVILLE - Lawyers often are reviled for torturing the English language. Notwithstanding that truth, maybe, heretofore, we should give them a break.

A crack team of University of Virginia law students who are part of the school's fledgling Supreme Court Litigation Clinic took on a case arguing, in essence, for the integrity of ordinary speech. The team won.

The clinic's mission is to find cases to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The point is to teach the students by involving them in real-life cases and to "initiate them into the rarefied air of a Supreme Court practice," according to Mark Stancil, a lecturer at the law school who is involved in the clinic.

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