Unique victory for UvA law students at international moot court competition
UvA law students have won the prestigious international Jessup moot court competition. It is only the fifth time a European university has ever won the tournament.
Never before has a Dutch university won the most important global student advocacy competition. Indeed, the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, as the annual tournament is called in full, had only four European winners until recently. And they were not the smallest: the prestigious University of Cambridge in 1975, that of Paris in 1992, Moscow in 2012, and Budapest in 2019.
As of this week, a new university can be added to that list: the University of Amsterdam. Year: 2023. The UvA takes over from defending champion Harvard University, which was the founder of the tournament back in 1960, after which American universities dominated the competition for years.
The UvA team consisted of international students Alia Squalli-Houssaini, Clara Parry, Nataša Adžić, Leopold Raab, Hannah Zigelski, and coach Sophie Schiettekatte. At the finals in Washington, they beat Bejing University. “It's great for the students,” said dean of the law school Andre Nollkaemper. “We're all proud of them.”
Official World Championship
Nollkaemper, who practiced with the students before the tournament, calls the competition the “unofficial world championship among moot courts, with seven hundred participants from a hundred countries.”
He and his colleagues have invested a lot in experiential education in recent years by giving advocacy a firmer place within master's programs. He therefore also sees this win as a victory for the entire law school. “This shows that we as UvA are attractive to talented, international students, offering them the education that enables them to compete with students from the best universities.” According to Nollkaemper, this victory further contributes to the program's “unique positioning.”
