tuks law students bring world trophy home
24 December 2007
The Tuks law team again took world honours recently when four students of the law faculty of the University of Pretoria brought home the trophy from the inaugural International Criminal Court Trial Competition held in The Hague, Netherlands.
The competition was held this month and Tuks was one of 12 of the world's leading universities invited by the International Criminal Law Network (ICLN) to take part in this mock trial competition.
Four students - Michael Dafel, Andrew Molver, Avani Singh and Jonathan Swanepoel - argued a hypothetical case based on some of the contentious issues surrounding the International Criminal Court. The dean of the faculty of law, Professor Christof Heyns, said what made the competition particularly relevant was that many of the issues argued would be faced as the court prepared to hear its first case, set to start early next year.
"At this stage, all of the situations that the court is investigating relate to Africa - from the DRC to Darfur. The involvement of Africans in the development of the court's jurisprudence will be essential."
The preliminary rounds of the competition were argued against the backdrop of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the court responsible for the trials of persons such as Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
During these three rounds, the team was scored both on their oral arguments and prior written arguments. The best three teams of the preliminary rounds were then selected to take part in a final round.
In the final round, the university successfully faced off against teams from India and Canada before an expert jury, including Professor M Cherif Bassiouni, one of the foremost academic experts in the field and a drafter of the Rome Statute, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.
The Tuks team kicked off their presentation by echoing the vision first expressed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: that in the creation of an International Criminal Court lay the hope for international justice. The jury noted that many of the points debated had not been foreseen during the drafting of the International Criminal Court's statute.
The Pretoria team won an additional award for the best written argument. It was prepared by Swanepoel.