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March 06, 2006

The Fletcher School Tops the 2006 Northeastern Regional Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition

On a bitter cold February 26th morning in Boston, The Fletcher School's Jessup Team set the Oliver Wendell Holmes Room in the John Adams Courthouse ablaze with their fluid arguments and unflappable demeanor.

In fact, the only thing The Fletcher School lost in the Northeastern Regional of the 2006 Jessup International Moot Court Competition was the final round coin toss.

Fletcher came out on top after the first day of a two-day competition held on February 25th at Boston College, placing 1st out of the 14 registered teams. Only four teams advanced to the second day. As the number one seed, they faced fourth-seeded Suffolk in the semifinals on February 26th. Both teams had 45 minutes to present their side of the case to a three-judge panel. Fletcher chose to argue as the applicant in the semifinals, resulting in Garth Schofield teaming with Amy Senier to defeat the respondents from Suffolk, thereby advancing The Fletcher School to the finals against Syracuse that afternoon.

It was at this point that Fletcher lost the aforementioned coin toss to Syracuse, which was allowed to select which side of the case they wished to argue. Syracuse chose to argue as the respondent, so Schofield and Senior once again had 45 minutes to argue their case from the applicant’s point of view. After Syracuse finished its 45-minute response and the teams exchanged rebuttal, both sides left the courtroom to allow the judges to deliberate. They returned 15 minutes later and were given feedback about their performance. A few nerve-wracking moments passed before the The Fletcher School team was announced the winner of the 2006 Northeastern Regional Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

In addition to the team’s overall win, The Fletcher School also picked up the 2nd Best Memorial award. Senier also took home the 2nd Best Oralist award, while Britton Schwartz, a Fletcher-Harvard joint-degree candidate, garnered 3rd Best Oralist for Harvard Law School.

In winning the Northeastern Regional, The Fletcher School defeated some of the premier law schools in the Northeast, including Cornell, Harvard, Northeastern, and Syracuse. With the win in hand, The Fletcher School advances to the international finals from March 27th to April 1st in Washington, D.C., where they will compete with over 100 top teams from all over the world.

After the competition, a Fletcher supporter who was present at the competition described what he had witnessed.

“It was like watching verbal kung-fu,” said Fletcher student Matt McCandless. “They ceded no ground, yet smiled all the way through, and their energy was simply infectious.”

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is the largest moot court competition in the world. It boasts over 600 law schools participating this year from over 90 countries, including more than 100 law schools from the United States.The competition was initiated by the International Law Students Association, and is judged by attorneys, judges, and legal scholars.

“The whole Jessup experience is so valuable because there are really so many facets to the competition,” said Coach (and Fletcher alumnus) Tamas Kovacs. “The key to doing well is very quickly seeing through a complicated legal problem, picking up the relevant facts, and making logical arguments in a very specific and structured presentation style.”

Team members Karoun Demirjian, David Raikow, Schofield, Senier, and Heather Sensibaugh were chosen for the team last October through tryouts by a panel, which included Kovacs and fellow students.

“This is a very versatile and diverse group of people,” said Kovacs. “They have very different styles, but what is common in all of them is that they are very persuasive.”

The team, in turn, also gave a lot of credit to the people who helped them prepare for the competition.

“Tamas worked us silly,” said Demirjian. “We also had great practice judges, within and outside of Fletcher, who prepared us to handle anything, and to be quick on our feet.”

The first phase of the competition began in late October when the participating universities received the case in writing. The teams had until January 17th to submit their written memorials. After submitting the written memorials, The Fletcher team practiced oral advocacy techniques beginning January until the start of the competition. Meeting at least twice a week for two hours allowed them to analyze and discuss the different legal issues presented in the case. They developed arguments and theories combining two batches of written materials provided by the organizers with their own legal research.

The case argued in the 2006 Jessup International Moot Court Competition is known as “The Case Concerning the Elysian Fields.” In the case, the fictitious Republic of Nessus dissolves into two countries, called Rubria and Acastus. Both countries have appealed to the International Court of Justice to decide four legal issues. The Fletcher team split into sub-teams to prepare arguments, both written and oral, for each side. Schofield and Senier took on the role of arguing for Acastus as the applicant, while Demirjian, Raikow, and Sensibaugh argued for Rubria as the respondent.

“Although no real world situation mirrors all aspects of the case, we did use various real world situations to support our arguments, said Sensibaugh. “For example, just this week the UN addressed the question of Western Shoshone indigenous land use in the western United States.”

The international finals of the competition in Washington D.C. will be conducted in a similar fashion. The Fletcher School team is eagerly anticipating the opportunity to compete against the world’s best.

“No matter what happens in D.C, I am already very happy with the way they’ve performed,” said Kovacs.

By Ben Micheel, MALD '07

Posted by jessica at March 6, 2006 12:02 PM