The North Carolina Court of Appeals doesn’t always do its adjudicating in Raleigh.
Sometimes, like Taylor Swift, the court takes the show on the road, and recently the crew in robes held oral arguments on the campus of High Point University (HPU). It was the appellate court’s first visit to HPU, which has recently added the Kenneth F. Kahn School of Law to its growing list of schools.
Two panels of three judges each from the state’s Court of Appeals met inside HPU’s Callicutt Life Skills Theater on Thursday, March 14 and heard attorneys and questioned them in two cases – one criminal and one civil.
Former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Mark Martin, the founding dean of the Kahn School of Law, said it was a real treat.
“We were honored to host the North Carolina Court of Appeals for the first time during HPU’s centennial year,” he said. “Moving forward, we hope to host oral arguments each year in order to enhance our students’ understanding of the appellate process.”
The appellate court, of course, determines whether rulings in lower courts should or should not be overturned.
HPU Police Chief Debra Duncan served as the bailiff during the arguments. It turns out that Duncan, who’s an attorney in addition to being the school’s police chief, was sworn into the NC State Bar in 2017 by Jeffery Carpenter, one of the six appellate judges at HPU that day.
The event helped call attention to the relatively new law school.
HPU President Nido Qubein announced in the spring of 2022 that the university was opening a new law school as part of a $400 million expansion. HPU later broke ground on a new three-story building that will be the permanent home of the law school.
Chris Dillon, chief judge for the Court of Appeals, said after the event: “Our first session of court at High Point University was an extraordinary success. We look forward to holding oral arguments in the new HPU law building on our next visit.”
