The West Virginia Supreme Court will be hearing two cases on April 9, 2019 at 10 am at the Morgan County Courthouse in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
The traveling Supreme Court is part of the Legal Advancement for West Virginia Students Program (LAWS Program) sponsored by the Supreme Court.
“The goal of the program is to educate students about the legal system in West Virginia,” Circuit Court Judge Laura Faircloth told Russell Mokhiber host of This Week in Morgan County.
“The Court will be hearing two cases – one a criminal case and one a civil case,” Faircloth said. “The Supreme Court will sit and hear arguments just as they do in Charleston. The lawyers representing the various parties make their arguments as they would in Charleston. The Supreme Court will ask questions and conduct their typical oral argument. Then after the Court retires, the students who have been invited to participate in process, they will be allowed to ask questions and be debriefed by the lawyers who just argued the case. It’s an amazing opportunity for students to become personally involved in hearing arguments and then understanding what happened.”
“It’s like going to a football game and after the football game, you get to talk with the players,” Faircloth said.
The students and the teachers from Berkeley Springs High School and Paw Paw High School will be sitting in the gallery.
“They would have already read the briefs,” Faircloth said. “They will understand what the arguments are. It’s not going to be a foreign concept for them.”
Faircloth said while the event is open to the public, “we only have about 100 seats and it’s my understanding that the students will be taking up the spaces.”