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Law School team reach quarter finals in world's largest international Mooting Competition

(L-R) Wee Toh Loo, Nima Pourdad, Isobel Kamber, Teddy Reynolds-Hunt and Rosel Tan.

Press release issued: 26 February 2019

Competing in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot, with participants from over 680 law schools in 100 countries and jurisdictions, the University of Bristol Law School team of five students managed to reach the quarter finals in what is the world's largest moot court competition.

Final year LLB student, Isobel Kamber spoke to us about the Bristol team’s experience of competing in such a prestigious mooting competition:

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot, was one of the craziest experiences of my time at university. The standard was exceptional, the pressure immense, yet the reward of having just competed alongside the UK’s best mooters in the hardest and largest International Law Moot in the world is, and was, amazing.

The moot problem tested our knowledge on the international legal sphere; specifically, in relation to that of State Responsibility: namely attribution and breach of an international obligation, whether it be relating to the protection of endangered species and the environment or relating to the breach of cultural and religious rights.

And as a result, the weekend saw us carrying suitcases of bundles each day to Grays Inn, in the hope we were fully prepped for any question relating to any case that could possibly be mentioned. By the end of the weekend it is safe to say that the cases of Prosecutor v Tadic; Whaling in the Antarctic and the Bosnian Genocide, to name but three of the masses of cases cited, are, and always will be safely engrained in our minds.

Every moot brought with it a new multitude of questions, with the judges finding new holes in the problem as the weekend went on. And as a result, our team would be nothing without Wee Toh. He sat with myself, Teddy, Nima and Rosel through every moot, frantically passing notes consisting of new fine points of the law or even general encouragement and good luck before each of our respective orations. To our team Wee Toh will forever be known as Weetoh-pedia, for his consistent magnitude of knowledge that he expelled on us all last weekend.

It was after four preliminary round moots from Friday through to Saturday, we were incredibly pleased on the Saturday evening to be informed we had made it through to the quarter finals alongside seven other universities in the UK. And on the Sunday we ended the competition as quarter finalists, leaving the University of Bristol as the 7th best team in the country, as well as national winners of the award for best respondent memorial. We also came 4th overall for our Memorials and Teddy was the 7th best oralist in the competition. The team and I are all incredibly proud of such an amazing achievement, the experience was incredible just in itself. Yet, it is unarguable that the best thing to have come out of the competition are the bonds within our Jessup Team.

 

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