THIS WAS NOT MOOT COURT, but the real thing. For two days in March, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania set up shop and held session at Penn Law, the first time it has done so at a law school.

Real judges, real counsel, real cases. Students could observe a range of criminal and civil cases and were permitted, at day’s end, to ask the judges questions. Judge Correale F. Stevens, who chaired the panel, and Senior Judges Frank Montemuro, Jr. and John Kelly heard 45 cases in the makeshift courtroom in the Levy Conference Center. The Superior Court hears up to 5,000 appeals each year from the sixty-seven county trial courts in Pennsylvania.

Before the proceedings, then-Associate Dean Seth Kreimer, who is also a professor at the Law School, thanked the Court for coming and giving students the “privilege of seeing how justice becomes reality.” He told students that, contrary to their perception, state courts, more than the U.S. Supreme Court, shape the
country’s laws.

Louis S. Rulli, practice professor of law, coordinated the program with Judge Stevens.