Leeds University Lawsoc Debating competition

The Leeds University Lawsoc Debating Competition was held on Wednesday 28th April 2010, in which eight finalists split into teams of two competed for the prizes of Best Team (for the best team of 2) and Best Speaker. Manpreet Kaur very kindly accepted our invitation to judge the debate, and her presence at the event evidently raised the debating standard and enhanced the sense of competitiveness for the debaters. The motion debated was ‘This House Believes That God is a Woman’ which was interpreted by the first speaker to mean that God is a woman, and therefore religion is inherently evil and produces extremist viewpoints. This mechanism then had to be followed by the rest of the speakers which proved challenging but ultimately ended up in a lively, heated debate. The finalists had previously competed in several preliminary debates and were the highest scoring speakers over the course of these debates. Previous debates had discussed the age of criminal responsibility, abortion, and the banning of extremist political parties.

The prizes for ‘Best Team’ were awarded to Gayan Samarasinghe and John Taylor, which were two vouchers for ‘The Light’ shopping centre in Leeds, and ‘Best Speaker’ to Naeem Hirani which was a bottle of champagne.

Leeds Lawsoc would like to say a big thank you to Allen and Overy for all of their support this year – the debating competition would not have been possible without you!