Why take part in a moot court competition?

When I took up studying law at my home university in Bucharest, it wasn’t because I was hoping to continue the legal tradition in my family and be called “counsellor” one day.

It was because during high school I had read a little Cicero and grown an admiration for the concept of oratory. To my friends who would question the artistic dimension of law, I would reply: “If you think about pleadings, law becomes art.”

Frits Kalshoven Competition 2009

It is difficult for us law students to have a clear picture of the career of a litigation attorney, since we aren’t able to plead exactly after graduation. Depending on the law system, young attorneys may follow an apprenticeship of varying length to learn the ins and outs of court proceedings. This means that we often can only dream of the time when we will plead a case before a judge, a jury or a panel.

There are however ways to hasten this moment: moot courts can represent an outstanding opportunity to witness and participate in a trial.

There are many moot court competitions throughout the world and information is far from scarce, but factual descriptions do not do justice to the excitement that comes with the event. What follows is a journey into the fascinating world of mooting as experienced during two recent moot court competitions in The Hague, the Netherlands, and Evian-les-Bains, France.

Trial simulation
A moot court is the actual simulation of a trial. Teams are given a fictitious case, usually six to eight months prior to the oral rounds. The case usually covers issues of law that are relevant for the two parties involved in the dispute, namely the Applicant and the Respondent.

Teams must prepare written submissions called memorials, and pleadings that they will have to expose before the jury.

Jury members are professionals from particular fields of law and their task is to simulate an international court: they can take on the roles of panel members in a dispute settlement of the World Trade Organisation, or become judges of the International Court of Justice.

The preparation process is tiring and stressful and a good communication among team members is essential. During this period, the members of a team must learn how to get along with each other, even when their personalities clash, and must determine how to make their collaboration efficient.

Frits Kalshoven Competition 2009

Humanitarian law
The first moot court is probably the toughest one: everything is new, the methods, the work, the team, and in most cases, even the language of instruction.

Research, research, countless sleepless nights, arguments between team members about the best way to tackle the case. In simple words: real life. Isn’t this what normally takes place in any attorney’s office?

So far, I have participated in two typical moot courts, the Elsa Moot Court Competition (EMC2) in Hamburg and Geneva and the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Bucharest and Washington D.C. These names might sound entirely strange to many, but they most definitely bring a smile to some, who have participated, trained or judged in these competitions.

Since they each covered distinct fields of law, I thought I had seen it all. A so called ‘hot bench’, or jury members who won’t let you proceed with your pleading and start bombing you with questions from the first minute; a venerable old judge who won’t hear you unless you speak at the top of your lungs; friendly panel members trying to help you out with the reasoning of their questions; and what not.

Still, I had no idea how much more engaging a moot court can get, until I applied for humanitarian law simulations.

Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico

Humanitarian law is the field of law governing armed conflicts and connected activities; in simple terms, it is the laws of war.

Under the supervision of Professor Menno Kamminga, two fellow law students and I decided to represent Maastricht University at the Jean Pictet International Humanitarian Law Competition, a competition welcoming teams from all over the world and organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Renilde van Roost, Irene Wieczorek and I started preparing ourselves on the topic by doing extensive reading and solving similar cases. At that point our professor decided that it would be helpful practice if we also participated in a similar national event, prior to Pictet, the Frits Kalshoven International Humanitarian Law Competition.

Frits Kalshoven International Humanitarian Law Competition
The second edition of the Frits Kalshoven International Humanitarian Law Competition took place on 23 - 27 February, 2009. The competition is named after Frits Kalshoven, who is Professor Emeritus of Public International Law and International Humanitarian Law at Leiden University and the author of the book “Constraints on the waging of war: An introduction to International Humanitarian Law”. For many students, this book is their first encounter with the field of humanitarian law. The Dutch Red Cross organizes the competition, in an attempt to stimulate student interest in humanitarian law.

During the competition, participants are requested to solve certain sudden legal complications to the case that the organizers present to the teams only shortly before the exercises.

Hosted in the Hague, the simulation brought together nine teams from Law Faculties throughout the Netherlands, such as Leiden, Utrecht, Amsterdam or Tilburg.

It was spiced up by the presence among the participants of the Dutch Defense Academy team of the Dutch Defense Academy, all dressed up in uniforms during the entire duration of the event, perhaps to impress the rest of the participants, but also to show respect for their future careers.

We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at the “kazerne”, a military barracks that was to be our home for almost a week. We had lunch and dinner with real military officers, we lived like soldiers, in five-bed rooms with metal beds, and we managed to pull it through. The purpose of being hosted in a military compound was to bring us closer to real life conditions; working as a delegate for the Red Cross, or doing voluntary work in oppressed areas across the world do not necessarily come with comfort..

Military barracks

Students were not only required to have some knowledge of humanitarian law, but also expected to understand how to apply it in different scenarios. In simulations, jury members do not always act as judges. They also perform role-play and there can be cases when jury members impersonate rebel leaders, military personnel or prisoners of war. As for competitors, they must also know how to act in the position of legal advisors for a president, delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross or representatives of states in the Security Council.

Such a competition format is designed to get students out of their books and onto the field, because there are major differences between theory and reality; this didn’t pose any problem to our team, since preparation at Maastricht University covered analyzing specific conflict areas. Another advantage we had in the competition was that during the course of Humanitarian Law given by the same professor at Maastricht University, we had dealt with many current issues and thus felt prepared to discuss the latest developments of law. Studying in English in Maastricht greatly helped as well, since English is the working language of this particular competition. Even if most of the students were Dutch, and there were only two English native speakers, language didn’t pose any obstacle to good performances.

Frits Kalshoven Competition 2009

Learning to cope with pressure
It was a tough blend of studying hard, performing as an actor and being able to hold laughter when a senior military officer would shout during the exercise as part of role-play. We had four days of simulation exercises, each lasting from 15 minutes to one hour; at the same time we were received training during lectures given by important members of academic and legal institutions, such as Dr. Yasmine Naqvi (Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia), Brig-Gen Van Duurling, Head of the Military Legal Service to the Armed Forces (Ministry of Defence of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), and Dr. Fabrizio Guariglia (Senior appeals counsel International Criminal Court).

Even if we enjoyed the role-play exercises, the highlight of the competition took place during the final day, and was the actual moot court session itself. Unlike the previous days, when simulations rarely implied that teams would go against each other, the final pleadings sessions opposed two teams ready to argue the same case. The panel was no ordinary one: four important personalities of public international law, including Judge Harnoff from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Judge Koroma from the International Court of Justice.

Frits Kalshoven Competition 2009

I was deeply honored to appear in front of defining figures of international and humanitarian law, especially when thinking that in a real career, this might only be possible after gathering a lengthy experience.

This event greatly motivated my fellow team members and myself for further studies in humanitarian law , even if it was nerve wracking every now and then. After a week of waking up at 6am and studying in peer pressure throughout the day, Irene, Renilde and I felt tired but satisfied. It wasn’t competitiveness that brought us on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but an overall stressful atmosphere created just to simulate real life.

The Dutch Red Cross, who had organized the competition, achieved its goal of creating a challenging event that will stay in our memories. The Utrecht University team won in the end, showing that the good bonding between its members and the accurate training they had received.

Utrecht University team, winner of the Frits Kalshoven Competition 2009

Jean Pictet International Humanitarian Law Competition
The Jean Pictet International Humanitarian Law Competition is actually the source of inspiration for its younger sibling the Frits Kalshoven International Humanitarian Law Competition. It was an initiative of Michael Deyra and Christophe Lanord, in honor of Jean Pictet, one of the persons in charge with the preparatory work that led to the adoption of some of the most important law documents in the field of humanitarian law: the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The Jean Pictet Competition ran its first edition in 1989. It focuses on simulation as an evaluation method and it is the only competition taking place in three languages: Spanish, French and English, due to the fact that every year, more and more teams apply from many corners of the world. A prior selection is made during the application process, which requires the preparation of two substantive law questions and one motivation letter. Every year the competition is held in a different city, and it has already taken place in several locations in France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, just to name a few. In 2009 the competition was held from 28 March to 4 April 2009 at Evian-les-Bains, France.

Jean Pictet Competition 2009, handing out exercise outlines

This year marked the second participation of Maastricht University in the Competition, as the first one was in 2001. Maastricht University participates in many competitions, and perhaps the shifting interest for other fields of law is one of the reasons why Maastricht wasn’t represented more often.

It was a very international environment, as representatives from Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australia and Europe were present under the same roof.

After five days of competition, dressing up according to the role play and improvising during the exercises, my team made it into the semifinals, together with other 15 teams out of the total 56 participating.

Jean Pictet Competition 2009, semifinals

Participating in this competition was remarkable. We learned a lot from the inspiring people whom we met throughout the week, and by that I mean the organizers, such as Dr. Maria Marouda, International Law Lecturer at Greek University Panteion and Dr. Theo Boutruche working at the UN High Commissariat for Human Rights in Geneva; the jury members, amongst whom professor Xavier Philippe from University Paul Cezanne-Aix-Marseille III and Vincent Sautenet, Legal Officer at the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and the participants whom we befriended, such as the teams from the European Inter-University Center for Human Rights and Democratisation, the University of Haifa, or the US Air Force Academy.

The Pictet spirit
The Pictet moot court doesn’t compare to the other moot courts I’ve been to; there isn’t the same sense of competitiveness in the air, when teams would lock themselves up in their rooms just to rehearse the pleadings. With Pictet, the emphasis falls more on our ability to express ourselves properly according to the situation we find ourselves in. Interviewing a widow as a member of a Fact Finding Commission cannot be compared to acting as a rebel. It is all about improvisation, courage and self-control. I believe every student should do this before graduating from Law school; what we win is an unforgettable experience, friends and maybe inspiration for our future career.

The Pictet spirit

For the record, the French University of Caen won the Jean Pictet Prize 2009. The organizers wished to preserve the “Pictet spirit” of cultural interaction intact, which accounts for the lack of any kind of ranking. In this way all the teams are winners.

Our strong point was that our team was very balanced, and we all had different and complementing skills. Looking back on our performance I would say that stress is a factor that should be taken into consideration at all times, because it has the power to ruin even the best prepared team. I am certain that my colleagues share my view that despite the stress and sleep deprivation we would definitely do it again. What we would then try to change would be perhaps to spend more time together, because that is the secret behind good teamwork: getting to know the members of your team.

As for myself, I learned that I can handle uncomfortable situations better than I thought and that working with team mates means letting go of stubbornness and meeting the others in the middle, so that collaboration goes smoothly and without unnecessary conflicts.

The entire competition was inspiring especially because we got in touch with delegates currently working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and who are doing field work all around the world. Visiting the ICRC website and watching a short movie about their work is enough to make anyone understand how horrifying the consequences of war can be and why the conduct of states at war needs to be brought to the attention of the international community.

Kyrgystan: TB behind bars, International Committee of the Red Cross

Another challenging element I discovered during the competition was an ICRC campaign in the making. Called “Our World, Your Move”, this campaign is meant to raise awareness on the humanitarian challenges in the world today.

I believe that this type of extracurricular activities can greatly add to the formation of a skilled law practitioner and help students in developing social skills and in overcoming their fear of public speaking. Participating in these events is also a helpful networking tool. Maastricht University encourages its students to participate in moot court competitions, for which it provides academic and financial support.

Maastricht University professors are interested in building a powerful image of the university’s professionalism, and representing a university comes with a real responsibility, which most of the time turns into devotion. We wore Maastricht University t-shirts and we were proud of that, because it was our way of saying that somehow, it was our university who had gotten us there. The responsibility is even more present when the supporting university enjoys a certain reputation in winning awards, not necessarily in humanitarian law competitions, but in the fields of European and trade law.

Still, besides all these undeniably positive aspects, there are other reasons, closer to my heart, for which I am glad for these experiences. They have given me an opportunity to travel to various countries, make many new friends and discover my commitment to humanitarian law.

By Catalina Goanta

Catalina Goanta is a Master Student from Romania at the Law faculty in Maastricht.

Photo credits: Frits Kalshoven Competition and Jean Pictet Competition