Nalsar Hyderabad became the first Indian team to win the international rounds of the Oxford Media Law moot by defeating the University of Technology, Sydney in the final rounds.

NLU Delhi finished as semi-finalist in the moot. NLSIU Bangalore won its eighth best memorandum award this season at the Tier 2 World Class MPL moot.

All the four Indian teams that qualified for participating in the international rounds broke into the quarterfinals, where Nalsar Hyderabad defeated NUJS Kolkata and NLU Delhi bested NLSIU Bangalore.

Singh said that the judging at the moot was more fine tuned with the Indian style of mooting. “I had participated in the Vis Hong Kong moot last year. I found the judging at Oxford to be much better. The judges focused more on content unlike other international moots where there is not much scrutiny of content. The problem with most Indian teams at international moots is that they speak too fast, etc. In this moot, there was heavy scrutiny of content and we had to use a lot of authorities and draw and imply a lot from the facts.”

“The final bench of the moot was also amazing. We had a seven judge bench which included judges from the High Court of England & Wales and the ECHR, Professor Timothy Endicott who is the Oxford Law Faculty Dean and also Mr Shardul Shroff from Amarchand Mangaldas, New Delhi. Arguing in the Rhodes Hall in front of such an illustrious bench was a great experience.”

Singh mentioned that they faced good competition throughout the moot. “NLU Delhi defeated us in the semi-finals of the national rounds and we defeated them in the semi-finals of the international rounds. There is no revenge. They were actually a very good team and were better prepared than us.”

He said that Nalsar also faced challenging rounds against the University of Belgrade, City University London and University of Technology Sydney.

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The moot problem was based on a mix of freedom of speech and expression and the right to privacy and these were extrapolated into the current scenario of censorship of social networking sites. “The moot problem was very interesting. First, it was a contemporary problem and second, there was no settled position of law. We argued before a fictional bench called the Universal Freedom of Expression Chamber of the Universal Court of Human Rights.”

“It was a great experience. Feels good to bring Nalsar back on track in this mooting season”, said Singh about bringing Nalsar its first international win this season.

However, the college remains in fourth place in the MPL rankings, 6 and 7 points behind NLU Delhi and NLU Jodhpur respectively, and more than 100 points behind the runaway leader NLSIU Bangalore.

Oxford: not yet Jessup or Vis

Anup Surendranath, the South Asia Coordinator for the programme in comparative media law and policy (PCMLP) at the University of Oxford, confirmed the results and said that 36 teams representing over 25 countries participated in the moot.

Surendranath said that the quality of Indian teams participating in the moot has been tremendous. “If we were to rank the international moot preferences of mooters in India, we have no illusions that we are a fair distance away from the position that the Jessup and Vis occupy.

“We are comfortable with that position and also pleased that we could get to that position within two years of starting the India rounds. However, what does set us apart from the experience at the Jessup and the Vis is our commitment to integrate the moot with our India Research Project.”

Surendranath said that mooters who qualify from India for the international rounds are given the opportunity (based on one further round of evaluation of their research and writing skills) to be under-graduate researchers on PCMLP's India Research Project. “It would be fair to say that this sort of intense and systematic academic engagement with one of the world's top universities for Indian under-graduate law students is rare both in Indian mooting circles and the larger space of Indian legal education. From last year's moot, we have Sahana Manjesh and Geetha Hariharan from NLSIU Bangalore working with us on the project for the last nine months.”

Note: We are still awaiting the final confirmation of the results and quotes from winners of the Frankfurt Investment Arbitration moot, G H Raisoni moot and the Vis (East) moot. Stay tuned this weekend for full updates on these moots!

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