NUJS wins Stetson India Rounds, RGNUL clinch second

The team from National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata comprising Sanchith Shivakumar, Udbhav Tiwari, Savitran Ramesh and Shruti Khetan won the National Rounds of the Stetson Moot Court Competition. The moot was organised by The Law School, University of Jammu, from the 28th to the 30th of November..The team from Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL), Patiala comprising Asad Hussain, Riya Prem Raaj, Prashant Singh, Prayaas Sharma and Ayush Bedi were the runners-up this year..Sagnik Das from National Law University (NLU), Jodhpur won the award for Best Student Advocate, while Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Gandhinagar won the award for Best Memorial..Bar & Bench spoke to Udbhav Tiwari on the winning team’s experience at the competition..Bar & Bench: What made you choose Stetson as a moot?.Udbhav Tiwari: The tremendous prestige, intense competition and particular interest in the field of public international law were the three main factors of us choosing the moot..The International Environmental Law Moot Court Competition organised by Stetson University, Florida is arguably one the most prestigious moot court competitions in world in the field of public international law. The varied regional rounds that take place in evey continent (Asia has as many as 3) prior to the International Rounds make the competition very intensive and well contested. This in turn also makes the regional rounds, especially in countries with a strong mooting culture like India, very competitive and prestigious. This can be seen from the quality of teams that turn up at the Indian Regional Rounds, where most teams that take part have an excellent prior record in international moots and put in almost 6 months of work before the Regional Rounds..Apart from the above reasons, the fact that NUJS won the World Rounds of the same moot in 2005 also served as a motivating factor for us wanting to do well at the moot..B&B: What was the preparation phase like?.UT: There was an Open Challenger that was conducted by our Moot Court Society in August 2014, which let us test and hone our skills against teams within our college. We won the challenger and had around 3 months to work on the problem, as we had our memorial submission as well speaking rounds in the last half of November. The memorial writing took the larger chunk of this time, as the problem was quite exhaustive and required a fair amount of work. Our seniors in college were a great help in telling us how to go about this part of the work. This involved everything from helping us find resources to editing our drafts..After the memorial submission, we did a few speaking practices with these seniors to rehearse our tentative speeches as well as to get used to the particular kind of questioning that takes place in National Rounds for moots in India..Finally, our compendium of documents submitted to the court was the last leg of work, which aided us greatly during our oral presentation at the moot..B&B: Any special moments you would like to share?.UT: There were quite a few but the Finals of the moot particularly stand out in our minds. The Finals Panel consisted of a previous World Round Winner of Stetson as well speakers who have taken part at the International Rounds of the Philip C Jessup Moot Court Competition, among other luminaries. The Panel was relentless in their questioning and that ensured that we gave satisfying answers. We enjoyed the process but were also humbled by the knowledge they had shown us that remained to be learnt for the International Rounds..Otherwise, our semi-final with NLU Jodhpur was a very close round that we enjoyed very much, as they were an excellent team.