1. 29UNILU AKTUELL· AUSGABE NR. 50 ·FEBRUAR 2015 PANORAMA
«A once in a lifetime experience!»
Alexandra Birchler and Milos Milosavljevic participated at the Inter-American Moot Court
Competition 2014 in Washington D.C. It was not easy: They had to defend a State which at
first glance committed various human rights violations.
■■ ALEXANDRA BIRCHLER I MILOS MILOSAVLJEVIC
Once you have participated in a moot court competition you get
the desire to do it again and again simply because it is interest­
ing and you learn a lot. Both of us had already competed in the
Lucerne Academy for Human Rights Implementation Moot Court
Competition, so we both knew what a moot court looks like. At
the beginning it was not a simple issue for us. The case seemed
to be quite tricky. In addition, we received the notice that we had
to represent the fictitious State of that case. We wondered how
to defend an «evil» State. However, with the help of our coaches
we found a fair way to argue the case. The case was about a
woman who suffered from a sensory and mental disability. Some
of the issues were new. On these grounds the argumentation had
to be creative. At the end of March 2014, we submitted our me­
morandum. Afterwards, we immediately started with the training
for our oral rounds. These training sessions were very intensive
and we started to rethink all our previous arguments and rewrite
every single argument more than just once.
International and multilingual
Nonetheless, after several weeks of preparation we had our final
version of the pleading complete. The journey to Washington D.C.
could start and we were all very excited. We had to argue our
case in front of a panel of at least five judges. One of the best
Alexandra Birchler and Milos Milosavljevic (in the middle)
with Prof. Dr. Alexander Morawa and coach Laura
Ausserladscheider Jonas from the University of Lucerne in
front of the White House in Washington D.C.
and most interesting parts of the Inter-American Moot Court is
that the competition is not only held in English. In fact, teams
can either compete in English, Spanish or Portuguese. In total we
had to plead three times. In the first round we plead against a
Mexican team. In the second round we plead against a team from
the United States and finally, our last round was against a Brazil­
ian team. Therefore, we enjoyed a very international and multilin­
gual competition in Washington D.C.
Intensive learning experience
At the beginning of our journey, we could never have imagined
what we were going to learn. You don’t only learn how to write a
memorandum, but you also learn a lot about yourself and your
personality. The Inter-American Moot Court Competition was one
of our best academic experiences we had during our studies at
the University of Lucerne. We recommend and encourage law
students to participate in one of the moot courts offered by the
University. It is a once in a lifetime experience!
Alexandra Birchler is a Master student at the Faculty of Law at the
University of Lucerne, about to graduate. Milos Milosavljevic is a Master
student at the Faculty of Law too, currently on exchange at the Temple
University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, USA.