2005 Jessup Cup competitors posing in front of
the United States Supreme Court, Washington DC.
(Photo by Ennio
Rizzi) 
U.S. Ambassador Martin J. Silverstein greets
Uruguayan team members Maria Brignini, Ady Beitler,
and Bernardo Amorin del Campo, along with Guillermo
Rosati de Ojeda and Nicolas Etcheverry from
the University of Montevideo. (Click
here to enlarge this photo)
Maria Brignini, Bernardo Amorin del Campo and Ady Beitler receiving the Ambassador's Certificate of Appreciation. With them: Nicolas Etcheverry, U.S. Embassy's PAO Linda Gonzalez, and Guillermo Rosati de Ojeda.
(Click
here to enlarge this photo)
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The Jessup Cup, one of the oldest and
most prestigious moot court competitions, is sponsored by
the American Society of International Law, the International
Law Students' Association (ILSA) and the Shearman & Sterling
law firm. Law schools throughout the world participate in
the Jessup Moot Court, preparing memorials (briefs) and arguing
a hypothetical case before the International Court of Justice,
the judicial arm of the United Nations. Students from 88 countries
participate, with winners of regional rounds advancing to
national rounds. National winners advance to the final international
competition held every year in Washington, D.C.
Named in honor of H.E.
Philip C. Jessup, justice of the International Court of
Justice, the Jessup Competition was founded in the spring
of 1959 by a group of international law students from Harvard
University, Columbia University and the University of Virginia.
This year, the competition was structured
in a way that pitted one team of student lawyers representing
the fictitious Republic of Appollonia against another team
representing the fictitious Kingdom of Raglan, an archipelago
lying about 700 kilometers off the Appollonian coast.
The dispute, which Appollonia and Raglan
have taken to the International Court of Justice for settlement,
arises from a hypothetical incident involving the Appollonian-flagged
cargo ship, the Mairi Maru. The Mairi Maru, carrying a cargo
of toxic nuclear waste, was seized by supposed pirates as
it was passing through the Raglan archipelago. The pirates
stole the ship's navigation and communication equipment
and its safe, disabled its steering system and abandoned
it to a storm. The storm drove the disabled ship onto uninhabited
sandbars, unclaimed by any nation, southeast of the Raglan
archipelago, where the ship began to leak toxic waste. The
sandbars, famous for sport fishing, generated significant
tourist income for the Raglans. The hypothetical case involves
issues of responsibility for piracy, nuclear transport,
and whether consent is required for a ship to enter another
country's territorial waters with a potentially hazardous
nuclear cargo.
A team of Uruguayan law students sponsored
by the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo participated in this year's
competition receiving some of the highest scores. The winner
of the 2005 Shearman & Sterling Jessup Cup was the University
of Queensland (Australia), however the four-student team
from the University of Montevideo comprised of Ady Beitler,
Isabel Laventure, Maria Brugnini and Bernardo Amorin del
Campo broke every competition record for first time entries
by winning awards for second best oralist (Ady Beitler)
among the 327 oralists competing, sixth best memorials among
the 108 submitted, and three out of four preliminary rounds.
"The Uruguay team was the talk of the competition",
commented their coach David Aronofsky from the University
of Montana.
For more information and rankings, please
visit the ILSA website: www.ilsa.org/jessup/jessup05/results.shtml
