The largest and most prestigious moot competition on international criminal law attracted 112 participating teams this year
The results are in from The Netherlands – mooters from SMU School of Law have done Singapore proud by taking top position at the 2016 International Criminal Court (ICC) moot court competition. Having also won the moot last year, SMU now has the best track record in this competition, and enters the record books as the first university to successfully defend a championship in a major international moot.
The SMU team comprised third-year law undergraduates Nurul Ayu Fajarani, Angus Koh, Stephania Wong, Selina Yap and Joy Yee, and second-year Juris Doctor student Dennis Saw Teng Sheng – all of whom were competing internationally for the first time. The principal coach was SMU alumnus Edmund Koh, and he was assisted by Nicholas Liu, also an alumnus.
Jointly organised by Leiden University and the ICC, this competition was established in 2008, and is now the largest and most prestigious moot competition in the world on international criminal law. The competition has four editions: English, Russian, Chinese and Spanish, with the English edition drawing the most teams. This year, the English competition attracted a global turnout of 112 participating teams, with the best 60 teams qualifying for the international rounds held in The Hague, The Netherlands, from 22 to 27 May 2016.
The competition requires each team to represent three sides: government, prosecution and victims. Each speaker speaks for 30 minutes in total - 20 minutes for main submissions and 10 minutes for rebuttal. Each round pits three teams against each other. The SMU team reached the championship final after eight matches, facing off against opposition such as former champions Bond University, University of the Philippines, and VU Amsterdam. In the championship final on 27 May, SMU was up against Germany’s University of Cologne and India’s National Law School of India University.
In the end, it was the SMU team, with their conviction, clarity and composure, that won over the panel, which was presided by ICC judge Howard Morrison.
[Photo: The winning SMU team: (L-R) Angus Koh, Dennis Saw Teng Sheng, Stephania Wong, Joy Yee, Selina Yap and Nurul Ayu Fajarani (Photo credit: Edmund Koh)].
With these latest results, SMU now has a total of 16 international moot championships in 34 final appearances since the School of Law's moot programme was launched in AY2009/10. In this season alone, SMU has reached eight international championship finals, winning three. Last season, SMU had also reached eight finals, and won five of them.
"We knew that defending our title was going to be hard, especially given the high quality of the international teams, but we have outdone ourselves again this year by matching last year’s record of eight international moot finals in a single season. With the continued support of the university and our partner WongPartnership, we look forward to scaling greater heights,” said Assistant Professor Chen Siyuan, who heads SMU’s International Moots Programme.
In April 2016, SMU also stood out from over 100 teams to become the first university to win the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition, organised by Oxford University, twice.
press release_Singapore team wins prestigiuos ICC moot 2 years in a row_finalPDF2.pdf
