The International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition or ICCMCC is an annual international

moot court Moot court is a co-curricular activity at many law schools. Participants take part in simulated court or arbitration proceedings, usually involving drafting memorials or memoranda and participating in oral argument. In most countries, the phrase " ...

competition on

international criminal law International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetrat ...

that is held at

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

and organised by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University, The Hague Campus, with the institutional support of the

International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals f ...

and

International Bar Association The International Bar Association (IBA), founded in 1947, is a bar association of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. The IBA currently has a membership of more than 80,000 individual lawyers and 190 bar associa ...

Pace Law School The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University is the law school of Pace University located in White Plains, New York. Founded in 1976 as Pace Law School, the American Bar Association (ABA) accredited it in 1978. Pace has a top-ranked Envi ...

had conceived of the moot as an in-class exercise in 2004, and it was in 2005 that a domestic competition was started. The competition became international the following year, with the finals being held in 2007. With more than 100 teams from 50 countries taking part annually, the ICCMCC is the world's largest competition on international criminal law and is considered one of the grand slam or major moots. Judges of the competition include ICC judges and officers, and teams have to present arguments based on a fictitious problem via the roles of prosecution counsel, defence counsel, government counsel, or victim's representative. The arguments made usually relate to pre-trial or appeal proceedings. Each team is given 20 minutes for the main submissions and 10 minutes for rebuttal/surebuttal. For the English edition of the moot, each country can only send two to three teams to participate; where necessary, regional rounds and national are organised to select the teams that will compete in the international rounds. As of 2020, such rounds have been held for the Americas and Caribbean, Brazil, China, Georgia, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, and the Netherlands. For the international rounds, in 2013, semi-final rounds were introduced for the top nine teams, with the top three teams proceeding to the championship final. In 2015, the number of preliminary rounds were increased from three to six, and in 2016 quarter-final rounds were introduced for the top 27 teams. In 2020, the oral rounds were cancelled due to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

, and in 2021 and 2022, the competition adopted an online format due to continuing travel restrictions.

Singapore Management University The Singapore Management University (SMU) is a public autonomous university in Singapore. The university is the only city campus in Singapore. It ranks third in Asia as a specialist university, behind Hong Kong University of Science and Techn ...

, which debuted in 2015, has the best track record in this competition, having reached the international championship final five times and winning it four times.

Competition records (English rounds)

References

Moot court competitions International law {{Criminal-law-stub