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On Friday 10 November the UCU team (Marianne L., Terry Tervel, Guillemette Guicherd, Juste Jaseviciute, Daniel Godfrey and Cassidy Shapiro) coached by Diana Odier-Contreras Garduno (Lecturer in International Human Rights Law) obtained the third place and the best oralist (Daniel Godfrey) in the Trans-European Moot Court Competition in Strasbourg.

The Trans-European Moot Court Competition gathers participants from different schools of laws across Europe. This year, Diana had the pleasure to be invited to participate as coach of a team representing UCU by the NGO sponsoring the competition, Civil Rights Defenders. As such, Diana selected 6 students form her human rights course (UCSSCLAW31) to be part of the UCU team.

Although the participation on this project was an extracurricular activity not leading to earning ECTs, the students representing the UCU team and its coach worked really hard since September. And during the last week leading up the competition, the students and Diana engaged into endless mooting and brainstorming sessions - the entire team worked day and night to prepare the presentations - some working sessions finished around 1am and 3am.  According to Diana, the whole project was an wonderful experience  “it was so rewarding to coach and watch the team rally in the face of obstacles such as the fact of receiving the rules of procedure one day before the competition and thus, adapting the presentations last minute as well as holding their own against teams which were composed of qualified lawyers (all students representing the other teams have finished their LLMs or are about to defend their LLM’s thesis) who had been preparing on a full time basis and who were even awarded 10ECTs for this activity by their home ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��.”

And surprise, surprise, despite all the apparent ‘disadvantages’, our beloved UCU team, composed of 6 ambitions students of liberal arts and with only 3 months of human rights law experience, obtained the third place and best oralist in this moot competition. This is clear evidence showing that UCU students excel in disciplines as well as in interdisciplinarity!!!

On behalf of the whole UCU community, we congratulate the UCU team and its coach, Diana Odier-Contreras Garduno, as well as the entire class of UCSSCLAW31 Fall 2017 for this achievement you all have reached!