Advanced International Law Clinic

This course engages with the practical aspects of international law and international litigation. It especially includes the University’s participation in the Telders Moot Court Competition. This is a competition among European universities in which a fictitious case before the International Court of Justice is prepared and presented.

The course consists in two main parts: the first one is the preparation of written memorials, while the second one concerns the oral presentation of legal arguments before a court. Each year, the Telders organizing committee presents a case between two fictitious states, concerning current challenges of public international law. Once the case is published, the class is divided in two teams, one of them in charge of preparing the memorial for the applicant state and the other one for the respondent state. In this regard, the students will learn how to conduct legal research and draft legal arguments in a structured and convincing way. Besides it, each academic year the course will focus on the substantive issues of international law covered by the case at hand. In addition, four students of the course are selected each year to represent the Université Catholique de Lille in the Telders Moot Court Competition.

Once the written stage is over and the memorials are submitted, the course will focus on the oral stage. Thereby, the students will learn how present the legal arguments orally in English language. As a training exercise, the students will form teams and plead against each other. At the end of the academic year, the selected students will attend the Moot Competition in The Hague and plead their case against other Universities from all over Europe.