CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ MOOTCOURTS ON ISSUES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW IN YEAR 2017/2018 MOOTCOURTS ON ISSUES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW IN YEAR 2017/2018 Milan Lipovský* It has become a nice tradition for me to inform the readers about the mootcourts that the students of the Charles University Faculty of Law participated in during the previous academic year. While mootcourts prove to be one of the best opportunities for the students to gain and practice their skills, they are also a conduit for the Faculty to find the most talented of its undergraduates. Due to that, the amount of mootcourts being organized all around the world is growing, and it is thus necessary to find the ones that would interest current students and promote greater participation. The academic year 2017/2018 brought several wonderful successes worth mentioning. The Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot (hereinafter referred to as “the FDI”) is focusing on simulating international investment arbitration based on bilateral investment protection treaties. The competition consists of a written stage (the students need to complete two submissions, one for each side) followed by oral arguments. This year’s finale took place in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and the Charles University teammade it to the finals (!) and was awarded 2 nd place in oral rounds, and in the overall score it achieved 4 th place. The members (Nikola Klímová, Katarína Kruľová, Zuzana Strnadová, and Helena Švandová), who worked under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Vladimír Balaš and were coached by Michal Stanek, deserve huge congratulations. It is also worth mentioning that the media took note of this success and reported on it. The FDI preparations started in the spring with the voluntary module supervised by Ass. Prof. Balaš and the Charles University team participated in the so-called premoots in Budapest and Warsaw. The team members pointed out one of the most important reasons for success in any moot when they said that “ the key to success in oral rounds were not only preparations under Michal Stanek’s supervision but also coherence and reliability of the team as a whole .” And as Nikola Klímová pointed out “ FDI preparations are of course, as in any other moot, very time-consuming but the more you put into it, the more you receive back. ” That is the best advice for any future moot participants and I am glad that someone else other than me has pointed it out because I keep repeating the same to every student that I speak with about moots. Human rights are a popular topic for international moot court competitions. The Nelson Mandela Human Rights World Moot Competition in Geneva proves that indeed because this year’s 10 th competition was based on numerous basis – while the topic itself was the right to life, prohibition of torture, and the right to family as described in the European Convention on Human Rights, the admissibility of the case was based on the rules of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the parties rights were regulated by the rules of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The team consisted of Hana Láníková, Hoang Nguyen, and Keefer Denney-Turner and was supervised by Dr. Alla Tymofeyeva.

* JUDr. Milan Lipovský, Ph.D. is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, Charles University.

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