Who is the best advocate?
Who are we? Lieneke Louman (24), Masters student in International and European Law, Ruben Brouwer (24), Bachelor Student in International Law and Djörn Rump (35), Masters student International and European Law.
The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is the world’s largest moot court competition, with participants from over 500 law schools in more than 80 countries. The competition is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice, the judicial organ of the United Nations. A team from each participating school is required to prepare oral and written pleadings arguing both the applicant and respondent positions of the case. We are the team for our Erasmus University. Proudly risking eternal fame or inglorious failure…
Left to right: Ruben Brouwer, Lieneke Louman en Djorn Rump
Pleading in Washington is the goal
Wednesday 28th of January
Three days left. Three days to prepare…
Despite the fact we have been training our pleading skills these last weeks and our lecturer and Coach Dr. Fabián Raimondo has been challenging our knowledge of International Law very severely, it still does not feel like ‘just another day at the office’. Quite on the contrary, actually… Saturday the 31st of January we will be participating in the Dutch Regional Round of the Philip C. Jessup Moot Court Competition in The Hague.
Thousands of law students from around the world worked all year long on this season’s Jessup Problem, which addresses the power and authority of the International Court of Justice and other important international law issues. Most students must first compete in national or regional competitions to earn the right to advance to the world championship International Rounds held every spring in Washington, D.C. The 2009 Shearman & Sterling International Rounds, which will mark the 50th Anniversary of the Jessup Competition, will be held March 22-28, 2009. This Saturday evening we will know if our preparations will be enough to convince the Court that the Erasmus University should be present in Washington. We did everything in our power thus far, now it’s up to the Judges!
Nightmare about winning and blacking out
Thursday 29th of January
Only two nights to go. Hopefully I will have a better night sleep than previous nights, cause the nerves are getting on me! If I fall asleep, I sometimes dream about us winning the competition, but usually I have a nightmare about me blacking out, or just looking stupid in front of these smart judges. Although the dream gets not much time during the night, I’m starting to think, that because we worked so hard and we’ve spend so much time on this case, it is not possible to fail. Well, at least we’re gonna try….
Today we had our last meeting and it went very well. We were all very focused and well prepared. We discussed the last issues and talked about our strategies.
It is a very funny thing that social people like us, do not have any problems with pleading, for example, in favour of capital punishment. This master class did not only help us improve our pleading- and presentation skills, it helped us thinking like a council. We’ll do and say everything for our party to win. So thankfully, it is not only issues like the death penalty!
Tomorrow is the last day for us to prepare our pleadings. One day of very hard work before we can finally show where we worked so hard for, for the last 3,5 months.
