The Sutherland Cup Competition (now the Seigenthaler-Sutherland National Moot Court Competition), hosted by The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, is a national appellate advocacy competition focusing on constitutional law. It is one of the oldest national moot court competitions in the United States (the Ames Moot Court competition at Harvard Law School started in 1911).
In 1949, Catholic University Law School students Robert J. Casey and Frank J. Whalen, Jr. approached Dean Brendon Brown with the idea for an inter-school moot court competition. Dean Brown supported their idea and invited the law schools of Yale, Fordham, and the University of Virginia to participate. With the assistance of University Trustee Lewis L. Guarnieri, the first Sutherland Cup Competition was held in the spring of 1950 and was judged by Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark.
The competition is named for Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland (1922 - 1938). The trophy, which is on display in the lobby of the DuFour Law Library, was donated by George Sutherland Elmore, a grandson of Justice Sutherland, who attended Cornell Law School for two years before graduating from Catholic University Law School.
The original four schools competed for nearly forty years, with a few changes. In 1963, The University of Virginia withdrew from the competition and Cornell University filled their slot. In 1983, Fordham University withdrew and The University of Virginia once again competed. In the late 1980s, the four-school competition was expanded and other schools were invited to compete. A list of the winners of the competition from 1983 through to the present is in the document below.
The competition has been judged by many outstanding legal minds, including Supreme Court Justices Harold Burton, Hugo L. Black, Tom C. Clark, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall, Byron R. White, and Clarence Thomas. Several former CUA Law faculty members have represented CUA as students over the years, including Professors Ralph J. Rohner, Urban A. Lester, and William F. Fox.
In 2016, the Sutherland Cup merged with the Newseum’s Seigenthaler Cup, a national First Amendment moot court competition begun in 1990. Named for John Seigenthaler, founder of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, the competition presents hypothetical cases based on current First Amendment issues. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic the oral argument portion of the competition was not held in 2020 for the first time since its inception in 1950, however the Best Brief award was judged.
In February of 2022, the Catholic University Law School hosted the inaugural program in the new Seigenthaler Debates series. This series is part of the Law School's First Amendment initiatives.