News Releases

UWI Law Students awarded ‘Best New Team’ at world's largest moot court competition

For Release Upon Receipt - June 5, 2014

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – A team from the Faculty of Law of The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus won the ‘Best New Team’ prize at the 55th Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Competition held in Washington D.C. from April 6 to 12, 2014. The ‘Best New Team’ award is given to a team who joined the competition within the past three years and obtained the highest marks in the oral and memorial writing sections combined. This year there were 126 teams at the international rounds and about 20 ‘new teams’ overall.

The team comprised four law students: André Cole, Arlene Lillian Chochan, David Prince Richi Edmund and Shane Justin Pantin, coached by Alicia Elias-Roberts, Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and International Law Moot Course Coordinator. The White and Case International Rounds of the competition were held in Washington and the St. Augustine team competed against four other teams from Uganda (Law Development Centre), Argentina (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Romania (University of Bucharest) and Hong Kong (City University of Hong Kong).

The Jessup competition is the world’s largest moot court competition, with participants from over 550 law schools in more than 80 countries. The competition is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice, the judicial organ of the United Nations. One team is allowed to participate from every eligible school. Teams prepare oral and written pleadings arguing both the applicant and respondent positions of the case.

Since the establishment of a Faculty of Law at The UWI St. Augustine in August 2012, students of the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree programme can now complete all three years of the programme at this campus. Come August, the Faculty will also offer a new university based, regional, LLM programme. This is the second year that a team from the Faculty participated in the Jessup competition.

The Faculty of Law will eventually be housed at The UWI’s South Campus, a 120 acre site in the vicinity of the Debe High School.

End 

About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation. Website: www.uwi.edu 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

Contact