The weekend that passed saw two hotly contested moot court competitions, the Amity National Moot and the Sarin-Leiden International Moot.

International Air Law Moot

India has the distinct honour of playing host to the world’s first aviation law moot. The moot was organised jointly by the Sarin Memorial Legal Aid Foundation with the International Institute of Air and Space Law, Leiden University (IIASL) at the Dutch Embassy in New Delhi.

The Sarin-Leiden moot, held between March 2 and 6 saw the Leiden University team comprising Mildred Trogeler, Tridev Budia and Michel Adam, emerge eventual winners from a pool of 11 teams. McGill University, Canada stood runner-ups while National Law University, Delhi stood third in the overall standings. Following them were Bangalore’s Christ University and Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar. The 5 Indian universities that participated were earlier selected from a national level moot which saw 9 teams competing. 

The moot is a brainchild of Chandigarh based Nitin Sarin, a lawyer and son of Senior Counsel, M.L. Sarin. Nitin completed his masters in the Air & Space law program offered by IIASL in 2009. Speaking to Bar & Bench, Nitin said, “When I was studying in Leiden, I spoke to my director and told him that we should organize a moot court competition in India. When I came back, I spoke to the director again and made it happen.” He added, “The IIASL is one of the only two universities that offer Masters and Doctorate programs in the field of aviation law, the other being the McGill University in Montreal, Canada.”

Bangalore based Christ University’s Anu Lisa Jose won the best oralist award. Hardeep Singh, a 2^nd year student from National Law University, Delhi was awarded the scholarship for an LL.M in Air & Space Law from IIASL for having presented the best oral arguments. This scholarship is awarded to a student from the host country.

The finals were presided over by Dr. Huang, CEO of Indigo Airlines, Michael Whittaker and Prof. Dr. Von Ziegler. The participants had a go at judging the judges as well. Dr. Huang was unanimously elected as the best judge of the moot court.

The Sarin Memorial, set up in the memory of the late Senior Advocate Harbans Lal Sarin and his son Late Ranjit Lal Sarin, is managed voluntarily by lawyers and law students and seeks to provide free legal aid and legal literacy to the poor, downtrodden and handicapped sections of the society. The second edition of this moot is scheduled to be held in Dubai.

Amity National Moot

The IX Amity National Moot Court Competition held between March 5 and 7 at Amity Law School’s Noida campus had 28 colleges from the country fighting for the top honours. The moot saw the support and participation of some of India’s biggest names in law, including Minister for Law & Justice, Veerappa Moily, Justice A. K. Sikri of the Delhi High Court and Justice Arijit Pasayat, Chairman of the Competition Appellate Tribunal, among others. Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan and Senior Counsel Arun Jaitley, were present for the closing ceremonies.

In the closely contested finals, the National Law University, Jodhpur (NLU) team comprising Rishab Chopra and Vinay Subramanium assisted by researcher Aniket Deepak, beat Nalsar University, Hyderabad.  Despite having lost the finals, Nalsar swept all individual awards at the competition. After bagging the Best Memorial Award,  Neharika Malik bagged the Best Speaker Award while Prabhat Kumar won the Best Researcher Award.

The moot problem was a combination of Intellectual Property, Constitutional and Administrative Law matters, considered by some participants as a unique and a complex problem. Rishab Chopra told Bar & Bench, “It was an interesting problem as this was the first time that a problem contained aspects of Intellectual Property Law and Constitutional Law.” Expressing his disappointment at not having won any individual awards, he said, “Despite having higher marks [in the final rounds] than Neharika, the award was given to her on the basis of her performance in the preliminary rounds”.