Czech Yearbook Vol. 4 2013

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MOOT COURTS ON ISSUES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW
MOOT COURTS ON ISSUES
OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW
There has been a quick rise in the number and quality of simulated court
proceedings (so called “moot courts”) that the Faculty of Law of Charles University in
Prague (PF UK) has taken part in during the last 10 years. Both as an undergraduate
student and later as an internal postgraduate student of the Department of International
Law of PF UK, I have personally taken part in many of these moot courts and witnessed
the successes of teams I was member of as well as those of other teams.
Since moot courts are one of the best ways to practice learned skills, I would like
to present some of the moot courts that our students participated in and review their
successes.
There are many moot courts, and it is impossible to quote the names of all
of them. So allow me to give some examples. As a member of the Department of
International Law I am obviously going to focus on moot courts that deal with issues
of public international law. However, even within this scope there are too many of
them to be all named. Probably the largest and most worldwide known competition
is the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.1 Others that
I would like to mention here are, for example, the following: World Human Rights
Moot Court Competition in Pretoria, European Human Rights Moot Court Competition
in Strasbourg,2 and others. The competitions are mostly international, i.e. there is
usually a national round, where one or more teams are awarded with the best team
award and are subsequently nominated as competing teams of the international
rounds. It is also usual that the language of the competitions is English or French.
Hence competing improves both the legal and language skills of the students. One of
the best known, and also French language, competition is the Concours Européen de
Droit de l’Homme René Cassin.3
Let us begin with the so-called Jessup competition. It is a regular moot court that
takes place every year and already has a very long tradition. The 55th competition
is going to be in 2014. The organizing entity is the International Law Students
Association (ILSA),4 though the national rounds in each country are usually organized
by various people / organizations under the supervision of ILSA. For several years the
Czech national rounds were organized by the Prague White and Case office, and
in 2013 the rounds were organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech
Republic. Both of these deserve many thanks for giving international law students
the opportunity to compete and for kindly organizing the competition. It may be
noted without exegaration that the competition is the largest moot court focused on
1 You can find interesting information on the weppage of the ILSA (organizor of the competition) http://
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