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Nuremberg Moot Court 2015: Marburg Students as International Criminal Law Practitioners in Nuremberg
From July 31 to August 1, 2015, the 3rd Nuremberg International Criminal Law Moot Court took place at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, the historic original venue of the Nuremberg Trials. A student team from Marburg also participated, continuing the successful representation of Philipps University in the first two years of this competition.
The Nuremberg Moot Court is a competition in which, based on a fictional case with both contemporary and historical references, proceedings before the International Criminal Court are simulated in English. Participants take on the roles of prosecutors or defense attorneys, presenting their arguments before a bench of judges composed of international practitioners and scholars in the field of international criminal law. This year, the thematic focus was on a country where, following a regime change to an authoritarian government, religious groups were persecuted to such an extent that allegations of genocide arose, and on a government official suspected of involvement in medical experiments on targeted individuals.
Through weeks of intensive work on the specific case, Moot Court participants acquire highly practical skills that are also of great relevance for their future professional careers. A Moot Court requires the ability to quickly familiarize oneself with unfamiliar territory and to express arguments convincingly and comprehensively, both in writing and orally. Persuading others is not only the goal of the Moot Court but a fundamental task for lawyers in general. And this is not done in one’s native language, but—as in Nuremberg—using English legal terminology as applied in international criminal law contexts.
At the Moot Court, theory and practice are thus combined in a way that typical law school formats cannot provide. The four Marburg students who took advantage of this opportunity this year—drafting written submissions for both the prosecution and defense and facing a team from Kenya in the “pleading” as defense in Nuremberg—were Maike Krüger, Janick Haas, Dennis Oynar, and Jonas Sahm.