International Programs | Columbia Law School

International Moot Courts

Columbia students currently participate in three international moot court programs.  These programs offer students yet another excellent avenue to gain experiential training in various international law subjects.  Such hands-on experiences serve as a perfect complement to course work in international law, human rights, international arbitration, international trade and WTO law.  Columbia faculty teaching within the respective fields associated with each program are involved in each moot competition.

Jessup International Law Moot Court
Named after Columbia Professor Philip C. Jessup, this is the premier international moot court.  The national/international competition is sponsored by the International Law Students Association in conjunction with the American Society of International Law, under rules prescribed by ILSA/ASIL.  At Columbia, the Jessup team has been selected through a local competition organized by the previous year's team and publicized through the Columbia Society of International Law.. We have won the regional competition several times recently; in 2003 the CLS team won national/international competition and Nick Boeving received one of the oralist awards. 

In 2005, Columbia's Jessup International Law Moot Court Team won both the national and international competition in the final rounds of arguments held in Washington, D.C. The Columbia team included Tracy Appleton, Seth Davis, Vincent Levy, Alka Pradhan, and Corey Whiting.

Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court
The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is the world's leading law school competition in private international law. Every year thousands of students compete through written memos and oral rounds held in Vienna and at the sister moot in Hong Kong. Vis immerses students in a hypothetical but thoroughly practical dispute in international trade between private parties. Along the way, they learn much about commercial law and arbitration. Columbia's record of success at the Vis includes: First Place Team in 1994; Third Place Team and First Place Claimant's Memo in 2006; and Second Place Claimant's Memo in 2007. The team is run by student and alum coaches with the involvement of Professors George Bermann and Alejandro Garro. All Columbia Law students, including 1Ls and LLMs, are welcome to apply for the Vis team around the start of each school year. For more information, visit: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/vismoot/

European Law Moot Court
The European Law Moot Court, founded in 1988, is the second largest international moot court competition in the world, and the largest and most prestigious in Europe. Each year, over 120 teams submit written pleadings for the competition. Teams from the European Union, Central and Eastern Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia participate in the competition. Each year the Regional Finals for the competition are held in four locations around the world.  Past regional finals have been held in various cities such as Boston, Dublin, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Thessaloniki, Exeter, Vienna, Bruges, Maastricht, Stockholm, Toulouse, Lisbon, Parma, Copenhagen, Budapest, Warsaw, Durham, Tallinn, Tartu, Prague, Edinburgh, Toulouse, Uppsala, Florence, San Francisco, Basel, and Cologne. Columbia hosted the Regional Finals in 2010.