Announcement and Revised Rules for the 2012 Intra-UCU Moot Competition:

Announcement and Revised Rules for the 2012 Intra-UCU Moot Competition:

The Faculty of Law is happy to announce that the Intra-University Moot will take place this Semester. Students in their 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of study in the LLB Progamme are welcome to participate in the Moot. The following are rules and details regarding the Moot.

Teams:
There shall be two law students on each moot team. All team members must be 1st, 2nd or 3rd year LLB students enrolled in January Term of 2012. 4th year students are not eligible to compete. Team members must be from the same year of study. Team members are not required to be enrolled in the same intake. For example a team can consist of a September intake LLB 2 student and a January intake LLB 2 student.

Schedule:
Briefs must be submitted electronically to Brian Dennison at bdennison@ucu.ac.ug by Midnight on evening of Friday, 17 February, 2012. Late briefs will not be accepted short of exceptional circumstances.

At least four teams from each of the three eligible years of study will be accepted into the oral rounds. Teams will be accepted based on their written briefs. A list of teams accepted into the oral rounds will be posted at the Faculty of Law and on the UCU Moots blog site by Tuesday the 21th of February. The address for the blog site is ucumoots.blogspot.com

The preliminary oral rounds will take place on Saturday, the 25th of February. The semi-final rounds will take place on Tuesday, the 28th of February and the final round will take place at 2:00 p.m. in Nkoyoyo Hall on Wednesday, the 29th of February.

The Moot Problem:
The Moot Problem is available for viewing and downloading at ucumoots.blogspot.com

Hard copies will also be provided to Class Representatives for sharing and copying.

Written Briefs:
In order to compete in the oral rounds of the Intra-UCU Moot teams must file a single brief on behalf of either the Petitioner or Respondent. 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.

The brief must be typed, and double-spaced. The font must be 12 point Times New Roman. There must be at least one inch of space on all of the margins. The entire 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. All portions of the brief including the title page count against the page limitation.

Please note that in the case of the 2012 moot problem the facts at issue are largely the language of the act 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 order to support the many Constitutional arguments germane to the problem.

The briefs will be scored on the following grounds: 1) Writing Style and Organization – 20 Possible Marks; 2) Legal Analysis and Application of Law to Facts– 20 Possible Marks; and 3) Compliance with Instructions – 10 Possible Marks

Oral Rounds:
The teams with the four highest scored briefs in each of the three years 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 are only three entries. The teams from each year of study will compete against each other to determine the winning team from that year of study.

The highest four scored briefs that do not qualify as the highest four briefs for any year of study will be placed in the “wildcard” bracket. The three winning teams from each year of study and the winning team from the “wildcard” bracket will compete against each other in the semi-final round. The four teams in the semi-final round will be seeded based on their written brief scores.

Each Oralist in the Oral Rounds will be scored as follows: 1) Knowledge of Law: 20 possible marks; 2) Application of the Law to Facts: 20 possible marks; 3) Ingenuity, Responsiveness and Ability to Answer Questions : 20 possible marks; 4) Style, Poise, Courtesy and Demeanour: 20 possible marks; and 5) Organization: 20 possible marks

In all rounds the team with the highest brief score will get to choose which side of the case it wants to argue.