University Stress Tests Lawyers Ahead of Rare En Banc Arguments

When Joaquin Gonzalez appeared before the en banc Fifth Circuit on Tuesday, he had already tested out his case before another panel, over a thousand miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There, the En Banc Institute at the University of Virginia School of Law assembled a panel of lawyers and academics to ask the kinds of the questions they expected Gonzalez of the Texas Civil Rights Project to face at Fifth Circuit.

Xiao Wang, the UVA law professor who heads the institute, said that while Supreme Court practitioners might be given the chance to moot before established practitioners at Georgetown and ...