AUS team wins first annual GCC “Jessup Friendly” Moot Court Competition

A team of students from American University of Sharjah (AUS) won top honors at the first annual Gulf Cooperation Council "Jessup Friendly" Moot Court Competition held recently in Kuwait. The competition, hosted by Kuwait International Law School, saw the winning AUS team address a variety of topics including litigation of an interstate dispute over the law of refugees, the use of transnational common-pool resources, the regulation of cultural property, evidence in international litigation, and the sources of binding international law before a mock International Court of Justice .

This victory comes on the heels of other recent successes. For the seventh consecutive year, the AUS team is the highest ranked GCC team participating in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, known simply as "the Jessup" to international lawyers. At last year's Jessup International Rounds in Washington, DC the AUS Moot Court Team won fifth place in the octo-finals.

The AUS team members are Shahed Abdul-Dayem, Jamil Haddad and Hassan Salman-all seniors majoring in international studies. Team captain Abdul-Dayem also won the Best Respondent Oralist award. She now prepares to defend her title as the eleventh-ranked speaker of the 2016 Jessup International Rounds. Serving as professor and coach of the AUS Moot Court Team is Dr. Barry Hashimoto, Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of International Studies.

Invitees to the GCC Jessup Friendly were GCC moot court teams that won their national rounds and thus gained a coveted spot on the list of competitors at the 2017 Jessup International Rounds. The GCC Jessup Friendly teams were scored by a panel of four judges drawn from law schools in Kuwait and the United Kingdom, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Georgia.

Speaking about the win, Dr. Hashimoto said, "I'm incredibly proud of our team for this accomplishment and grateful to AUS, the Department of International Studies and the Board of Trustees for their enthusiasm for the AUS moot court tradition, which aims to educate the next generation of international lawyers from the Middle East. We're going into the International Rounds in high spirits. Special thanks go to Kevin Gray, Vernon Pedersen, Mahmoud Anabtawi, and Joseph Brand for their longstanding support of this tradition."

The AUS Moot Court Team will represent UAE in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, the world's largest moot court competition held in Washington DC and sponsored by the International Law Students Association and White & Case. The event is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice, the judicial organ of the United Nations.