Rules for the 2011 UCU Intra-University Moot Competition

Rules for 2011 Intra-UCU Moot Competition:

Teams:

There are two law students on each team. All team members must be enrolled in UCU’s Faculty of Law in 2011. All team members must be from the same year of study. Team members are not required to be enrolled in the same intake sessions.

Schedule:

Briefs must be submitted electronically to Brian Dennison at dbriandennison@law.ucu.ac.ug by Friday, 20 May, 2011. Briefs can be filed as late as midnight on the 20th. Late briefs will not be accepted short of exceptional circumstances.

At least four teams from each class will be accepted into the oral rounds of the moot based on their briefs. A list of teams accepted into the oral rounds based on briefs will be posted at the Faculty of Law and on the UCU Moots blog site by on Friday, 27 May. The address for the blog site is http://ucumoots.blogspot.com/ The first two rounds of the oral competition will take place on Friday, 3 June. The semifinal round will take place on Saturday, 4 June. The final round will take place on a date to be announced on the following week. All teams who are not selected to participate in the oral rounds will be invited to present an oral argument for purposes of evaluation and feedback on Saturday, 4 June. This will give all students who submit briefs the opportunity to be evaluated by the UCU Law Faculty Members involved with the UCU Moot Programme.

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 Petitioner or Respondent.

The brief must be typed, and double-spaced. The font must be 12 point Times New Roman or 12 point Courier. There must be at least one inch of space on all of the margins. 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 2 pages in length), a legal argument section, and a short prayer of relief. (Please note that in the case of the 2012 moot problem the facts at issue are largely the contents of the law that is being challenged. While it is a “law” for the purposes of this exercise its contents are the facts of the case.)

Teams should structure their arguments as the legal issues are presented in the Moot Problem. Teams are expected to cite ample case law from both Uganda and other jurisdictions in oder to support the many Constitutional arguments elicited by the problem.

The names of the students and their 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. E-mail points of contact for the team should also be included on the top corner of the first page.

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 Instructions – 10 Possible Marks

Note: Students are strongly cautioned not to use or refer to briefs of other students (including briefs written by students enrolled in Clinical Legal Education 2) when drafting their briefs.

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.

In the event that there are two or less briefs filed by the fourth year class a “wildcard” bracket will be created that will consist of the highest scored briefs of all of the classes that were not selected to compete in the four team bracket for their year of study. The four teams from each year of study (and if applicable the “wildcard” bracket) 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, Responsiveness and Ability to Answer Questions : 20 possible marks
Style, Poise, Courtesy and Demeanour: 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 semi-final and final rounds the side to be argued by each team will be determined by coin flip.