The legal team of Yerevan State University won the national stage of the "Philip Jessup International Law" annual moot-competition and will represent Armenia at the international stage to be held in Washington.
The national final stage of the competition took place on January 28 at the RA Constitutional Court. This year, applications were submitted from three universities: Yerevan State University, Russian-Armenian University and French University in Armenia. In the final round, teams of YSU and Armenian-Russian University competed against each other.
The event has been organized by the International and Comparative Law Center for several years. The head of the center, Siranush Sahakyan, speaking about the purpose of the moot-court competition, said that through the competition, they put international public law on a practical basis. In the selected cases, many international legal issues become the subject of comprehensive discussion, while modern trends are taken into account.
“By engaging in these case studies and court presentations, students, firstly, begin to study public international law more deeply, and secondly, develop practical abilities, such as rhetoric, which is very important in practical work,” stressed the lawyer, who also acted as a judge in the competition.
The judges of the moot-court competition were Aram Aramyan and Levon Gevorgyan, chaired by Yeghishe Kirakosyan.
This year, unlike previous years, the theme of the moot game competition was related to human rights issues. The institution of citizenship was discussed.
“In the moot-court competition, there was a case when a person was deprived of citizenship, which also has the dangers of statelessness. This is not allowed by international law. There are very limited cases when this institution is tolerated. In the moot-court competition, there were also issues of granting citizenship, which was related to the institution of investment, in other words, the purchase of citizenship by providing economic benefits, Siranush Sahakyan noted, adding, here there was also a question of consular access when a person was deprived of his freedom and his citizenship the country should exercise the right of consular visit".
Maria Hovhannsiyan, a participant of the winning YSU team, speaking about her impressions, mentioned that winning the competition was the personal goal of everyone in the team.
"I took part last year, but I lost. The goal of all of us this year was not only to register a victory, but also to uphold the honor of Yerevan State University. At this point, we feel obligated. We want to represent our country very well in the international tournament. It will sound like a dream, but we want to record such a result that has not been recorded yet. We are ready to work as much as we need for that," Maria said.
The annual "Philip Jessup International Law" moot-competition is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It is named after Philip Jessup, who once served on the ICJ, and was organized by the International Law Students Association (ILSA). The moot court competition, led by Stephen Schwebel (who also wrote the original moot problem), began as a friendly advocacy competition between two teams at Harvard University in 1960.
Armenia has been participating in this competition since 2000, since 2015 it has been held here in English, which requires full command of the language by the participants.
The international round will take place in Washington from March 30 to April 6, where more than 60 countries will compete.