Ninth International Roman Law Moot Court Competition

The Ninth International Roman Law Moot Court Competition was held in Vienna from 6 to 9 April 2016, a little over 2,000 years after the Romans fortified the city of Vindobona to guard against invaders from the north. The preliminary and semi-final rounds were held in the Universität Wien’s Juridicum, home of the largest law school in the German-speaking world. The Moot was especially privileged to hold the Small and Grand Finals in Austria’s Verfassungsgerichtshof, the oldest dedicated Constitutional Court in the world. Dr Johannes Schnizer, a Judge of the Court, presided at the Finals.

Drawing inspiration from a professor’s chance meeting with Harrison Ford, Peter Paul Rubens’s representation of the Calydonian Boar at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and speculation as to the fate of the libraries of the Byzantine law schools in Constantinople and Beirut, the libellus required counsel to engage with complex questions of private law: the essentially economic delict of corruption of a slave, with incidental issues of ecclesiastical manumission and consequential loss, and the obligations arising quasi ex contractu from negotiorum gestio, voluntary but unauthorised administration of another’s affairs.

The palma victoriae went to the University of Tübingen, who were undefeated on the path to their first-ever win in this competition, beating the University of Cambridge in the Grand Final. The University of Oxford took third place, ahead of the Université de Liège. The Clifford Chance LLP Best Oralist Prize was awarded to Sima Simari (Tübginen).

The competing Universities gratefully acknowledge the support of the Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät at the Universität Wien and of Clifford Chance LLP.

The libellus for the Ninth IRLM is available here: libellus_mmxvi.pdf