In a significant achievement for the Indian Mooting Community, a team from Government Law College, Mumbai (GLC, Mumbai) comprising of Sharnam Vaswani, Urshila Samant, Drashti Gala and Niyati Karia has emerged victorious in this year's edition of the John H. Jackson Moot Court competition, organised by the European Law Students' Association (ELSA), with support from the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The World Rounds this year were held virtually from June 23-28, 2020.
The Competition is themed on International Trade Law, with the rounds being simulations of the WTO dispute settlement systems involving the exchange of written submissions and adversarial hearings before experts on trade law.
The final round was streamed live on ELSA’s Facebook Page.
This year’s case study concerned the legal implications of alleged trade violations related to the cultivation of crayfish arising under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994.
The team beat competition from premier law schools from across the world such as Harvard University, University of Manila, and University of Bogota in the run-up to the finals.
Teams in penultimate rounds of the competition were Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), and University of Geneva (Switzerland), in addition to the team from GLC Mumbai. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven were runners-up in the competition.
The team from GLC, Mumbai also won other prizes in the Competition. They were awarded with the Ambassador Santiago Wills Award for the Best Team from a Developing Country. The team’s Urshila Samant was also adjudged the Best Orator in the Grand Final.
Teams from Jindal Global Law School and Gujarat National Law University were the other teams from India that had qualified for the World Rounds from the Regional Rounds. 78 teams participated in the Competition.
The last time an India team won the prestigious ELSA-WTO Moot Court Competition was in the Competition's all-Indian final of 2015 when the West Bengal National University for Juridical Sciences won the competition with the National Law University, Jodhpur emerging as Runners'-Up.
Watch the Finals here: