A team of law students from the Universidad Los Andes (Colombia) won the 2009 Shearman & Sterling Jessup Cup on March 28, competing against a team from University College London in the final round of the Shearman & Sterling International Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. Sebastian Machado Ramírez, a student from Los Andes University, won the Stephen Schwebel prize for best oralist—launched this year in honour of the former President of the International Court of Justice on his 80th birthday—in the World Championship Round.
The Jessup is widely considered as the most prestigious public international law moot court competition. It is also the oldest and by far the largest such competition in the world. Participating in this year's competition were 568 teams from 80 countries, and the Shearman & Sterling International Rounds were attended by 120 teams from 76 countries.
In this competition, students are required to present oral and written arguments on a hypothetical problem to a simulated International Court of Justice. This year’s problem raised issues regarding the power and authority of the International Court of Justice, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and a peacekeeping force set up by the UN Security Council in the context of violations of territorial sovereignty, riots and violence, and human rights abuses. Sitting on the jury in the final Round were Judge Bruno Simma (International Court of Justice), José E. Alvarez (Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Columbia Law School), and Professor Ruth Wedgwood (Edward B. Burling Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies).
“This year’s Compromis focused on the legal issues arising from interventions in the affairs of a State on humanitarian grounds,” said Yas Banifatemi, the Paris-based partner leading Shearman & Sterling’s Public International Law practice, during the inaugural speech at the International Round’s opening ceremony. “Throughout the 1990s, cases such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo highlighted the divide between supporters of humanitarian intervention and those who argued that State sovereignty precluded any intervention in what was considered to be internal affairs. The international community is sadly confronted again by human rights abuses at a large scale. It is for all of us, as members of the international community, to rise to the challenge.”
To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Competition, a special gala dinner was held on Friday March 27. Guest speakers included Judge Rosalyn Higgins, outgoing President of the International Court of Justice, and Stephen M. Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice and author of the first Jessup Competition problem in 1960.
Shearman & Sterling has been the exclusive sponsor of the Jessup’s International Rounds since 2003. The firm has also been the exclusive sponsor of the competition in France since 2001 and of the US Northeast Super Regional rounds (formerly the US Atlantic Regional rounds). During the gala dinner, the International Law Students Association, administrator of the Competition, acknowledged Shearman & Sterling’s financial and logistical support, noting that the firm has been highly instrumental in the exponential growth in participation since 2003, as the number of participating teams has gone from 200 to over 500.
The award was presented to the winning team by Emmanuel Gaillard, a Paris-based partner and head of Shearman & Sterling’s global International Arbitration practice. “We were the first large firm to believe in the Jessup,” Gaillard said, "and so today we are very pleased and proud to have contributed to the development of the Competition.”
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