NUS Law emerge Champions at Jessup National Round

A team of five students from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law (NUS Law) defeated their counterparts from the Singapore Management University to emerge as Champions at the Singapore National Round of the 2019 Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, held at the Singapore Court of Appeal on 23 February 2019.

The NUS Law team swept all of the prizes, including Best Memorials, and Low Ee Ning ’19 and Melody Lau ’19 were tied for the Best Oralist award. The team will go on to represent Singapore at the International Rounds of the Jessup Moot Court Competition, which will be held in Washington, D.C. in the United States from 31 March to 6 April 2019.

The 2019 NUS Law team comprises Ayana Ki ’19, Low Ee Ning ’19, Melody Lau ’19, Darren Sim ’20 and Lucas Lim ’20. The team was trained and coached by NUS Law alumni Associate Professor Lim Lei Theng ’92, David Isidore Tan ’16, Joshua Hiew ’17 and Victor Leong ’16, who themselves have represented NUS Law in past Jessup competitions.

This year’s Jessup moot problem required the team to master a wide range of complex international law topics. These included issues of State responsibility for corporate acts with extraterritorial effects, the law on the conservation of endangered migratory species, the balancing of religious and cultural rights against the right to health and scientific progress, and the rights of indigenous people to be compensated when their traditional knowledge is used for profit. The Singapore National Round was judged by an esteemed panel comprising Mr Lionel Yee, SC (Deputy Attorney-General, Attorney-General’s Chambers), His Excellency Mahmoud Hmoud (Embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to Singapore) and Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy (Supreme Court of Singapore).

The Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is the world’s largest and most prestigious moot court competition. More than 600 teams from over 80 countries compete in various national and regional rounds worldwide, before the winners face off at the international rounds in Washington, D.C.

To date, NUS Law has won the Jessup international competition four times and has been runners-up seven times.