Rules for 2009 Intra-UCU Moot Competition

Teams:

Each team shall be comprised of at least two and no more than three members.

All team members must be enrolled in UCU’s Faculty of Law in 2009.

All team members must be from the same year of study. Team members are not required to be enrolled in the same intake sessions.

Each team must register with the Faculty of Law before filing their briefs.

Upon registration teams will be assigned a team number that they will use when filing their briefs.

Schedule:

Briefs must be submitted in paper form to the Faculty of law in the designated box or electronically to Brian Dennison at bdennison@law.ucu.ac.ug by 13 May, 2009.

Late briefs will not be accepted after 18 May, 2009.

Teams that have been selected to compete in the oral rounds will be posted at the Faculty of Law by June 1, 2009. Out of session students who have qualified to advance to the oral rounds will be notified by other means.

The oral competition will be scheduled to take place some time in June of 2009.

(Due to timing of exams, it has been determined that the competition needed to be held after the conclusion of January semester. The Moot Program Director apologizes to students in September intakes if this will cause difficulty in attending the oral competition off-session.)

Briefs:

In order to compete in the oral rounds of the Intra-UCU Moot teams are required to file a single brief on behalf of either the Appellant or Respondent.

The brief must be typed, and double-spaced.

The brief may not exceed 25 pages. There is no minimum length.

The brief shall consist of a title page, a table of authorities, a concise statement of facts and proceedings (not to exceed 5 pages in length), a legal argument section, and a short prayer of relief.

Teams are not limited to the legal authorities provided or referenced in the moot court problem. Additional authority may be used if the team believes it is relevant to their position or if there is relevant authority that they believe they have a duty to present to the court in order to fairly represent the pertinent legal authority.

The team number and the year of study must be listed on the top corner of the first page of the brief and at the end of the brief on a by-line.

You may not include the names of team members on the brief.

Scoring of the Briefs:

The briefs will be scored on the following grounds:

Writing Style and Organization – 20 Possible Marks
Legal Analysis and Application of Law to Facts– 20 Possible Marks
Compliance with Instruction – 10 Possible Marks

There is a 5 mark reduction for each day that the brief is filed late. No briefs will be accepted after 3 April, 2009.

Oral Rounds:

The teams with the four highest scored briefs in each year of study will be permitted to compete in the oral rounds. If there are four briefs or less than four briefs submitted for any year of study, all teams that have submitted briefs in that year of study will advance to the oral rounds with the highest scoring brief receiving a bye in case there is an odd number of entries.

The teams from each year of study will compete against each other to determine the winning team from that year.

The four teams from each year of study will compete against each other for the title of Intra-UCU Champion.

Each Oralist in the Oral Rounds will be scored as follows:

Knowledge of Law: 20 possible marks
Application of the Law to Facts: 20 possible marks
Ingenuity and Ability to Answer Questions : 20 possible marks
Style, Poise, Courtesy and Demeanor: 20 possible marks
Organization: 20 possible marks

In the first two rounds, the team with the highest brief score will get to choose which side it wants to argue.

In the final two rounds the side to be argued by each team will be determined by coin flip.