Earlier this month, the Mattone Center Student Fellows had the privilege of traveling to Rome to participate in the ninth International Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion, held on March 13 and 14 at the St. John’s University Rome campus. The competition brought together teams from law schools from the United States and Europe, including teams from Italy, Poland, and Ukraine–about 100 participants in all. This marked the first time St. John’s has hosted the competition. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ’83, a member of the Mattone Center’s board, served as one of the judges at the competition.
The competition problem centered on a hypothetical dispute between a religious school, Thomas More School, and the government of the State of Utopia, which had enacted an “Equality in Education Act” alleged to infringe upon the school’s right to freely exercise its religious beliefs. The fellows were divided into two teams: Kalina Mesrobian ’26 and Stacey Kaliabakos ’27 represented the school, while Vincent D’Avanzo ’27 and Isabel Lane ’27 argued on behalf of the government.
Being able to represent St. John’s in an international competition was an exciting and rewarding experience for our fellows. The fellows were were very fortunate to receive guidance from Center Director Mark Movsesian, St. John’s Law School Professor Robert Ruescher, and St. John’s Law alumnus James Herschlein, chair of the Litigation practice group at Arnold & Porter, who generously served as their coach and traveled to Rome to support the team in person. Their mentorship played a substantial role in helping our fellows grow their advocacy skills and confidence as they headed into the competition.
Beyond the “courtroom,” the experience in Rome was truly unforgettable. Our fellows had the opportunity to form friendships with students from different countries, schools, and legal traditions, showing them how the answers to questions at the intersection of law and religion can vary across the globe. They were also able to explore some of Rome’s most iconic sites, including the Vatican Museums, the Galleria Borghese, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and the Colosseum.
Participating in this competition was a unique experience that strengthened the fellows’ legal skills, as well as their sense of community within the international legal world.
We don’t think of it this way today, but in terms of ancient geopolitics, Islam was as much the heir of the Roman Empire as was Byzantium or the barbarian kingdoms of the West. Consider: within about a century of the fall of Rome, Islam had conquered the key Roman province of Egypt and all of North Africa. What had been a crucial part of the Roman world, the home of Tertullian and Augustine, very quickly became a crucial part of a new imperial state.
converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their experiences of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them, and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither their juniors’ interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their propensity for violent conflict. Watts examines why the “final pagan generation”—born to the old ways and the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious practices would continue as they had for the past two thousand years—proved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as well as students and scholars of the ancient world.