What is the eligibility level for participants in Empire Chicago 2026?

Empire Chicago 2026 is designed for high-school level participants, offering an educational and competitive experience tailored to this age group.

Where will Empire Chicago 2026 take place?

The event will be held in the city of Chicago, USA, providing a significant North American urban setting for the competition.

What kind of format does Empire Chicago 2026 follow?

Empire Chicago 2026 is a mock trial competition, where participants engage in simulated courtroom proceedings as attorneys and witnesses.

Empire Chicago 2026

Nov 13–16, 2026Chicago, United StatesIn-person

Registration open

Empire Chicago 2026 offers a distinctive opportunity for high school students to engage in a competitive mock trial experience within the vibrant city of Chicago, USA. This event, hosted by Empire Mock Trial, is designed to immerse participants in the intricacies of legal proceedings, fostering critical thinking, public speaking, and teamwork skills. Students will step into the roles of attorneys and witnesses, presenting their cases before experienced legal professionals and educators. The program emphasizes a hands-on approach to legal education, allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical, simulated courtroom environment. The event's setting in a major North American city further enhances the experience, providing a dynamic backdrop for this intensive academic competition. Participants will gain invaluable insights into the American legal system and develop skills transferable to various academic and professional pursuits.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

United States

Host nation and primary legal system focus.

Role in topic

As the host country, the USA provides the legal framework and cultural context for the mock trial competition. Participants will engage with the American adversarial legal system, learning about its procedures, rules of evidence, and constitutional principles. The event in Chicago offers a direct immersion into the judicial practices prevalent in the USA.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

World Health Organization (WHO)

The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as the United Nations specialized agency for international public health, succeeding earlier bodies such as the League of Nations Health Organization. For decades, it coordinated landmark campaigns including the eradication of smallpox in 1980 and the global push against polio, while setting norms through the International Health Regulations, first adopted in 1969 and substantially revised in 2005 after the SARS outbreak. The agency operates through the World Health Assembly, where all 194 member states set policy and approve the budget. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep weaknesses in the global health architecture, prompting member states to launch negotiations on a Pandemic Agreement and to amend the IHR. After more than three years of talks, the World Health Assembly adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement in May 2025, with implementation now hinging on contentious provisions around pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS), technology transfer, and equitable distribution of countermeasures. Parallel debates concern chronic underfunding, the politicization of the agency, and the 2025 U.S. withdrawal notice, which has reopened questions about assessed contributions and donor dependency. Beyond pandemics, the WHO faces mounting pressure on non-communicable diseases following the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs, on antimicrobial resistance, and on health emergencies in Gaza, Sudan, and the eastern DRC. Delegates must balance sovereignty concerns with the need for binding global cooperation in an era of fragmented multilateralism.

Key players

European Union (EU)

The European Union traces its origins to the 1951 Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, designed to bind France and Germany economically after the Second World War. Successive treaties — Rome (1957), Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam, Nice, and Lisbon (2009) — transformed a six-member common market into a 27-state political and economic union with a single currency used by 20 members, a customs union, a single market, and shared institutions including the European Commission, Council, Parliament, and Court of Justice. The bloc has been tested by successive crises: the 2009 sovereign debt crisis, the 2015 migration surge, the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent UK withdrawal in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced the unprecedented €750 billion NextGenerationEU recovery fund. Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine catalyzed a strategic shift, including coordinated sanctions, joint weapons procurement, the REPowerEU energy plan, and accelerated accession talks with Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans. Today the EU is debating its next enlargement wave, the Draghi report's call for a competitiveness and industrial strategy to match the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and Chinese state subsidies, the European Green Deal's implementation amid agricultural protest, asylum and border policy under the 2024 Migration and Asylum Pact, and strategic autonomy in defense and technology as transatlantic relations grow uncertain.

Key players

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded in Bangkok in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as a Cold War-era grouping aimed at containing communism and resolving intra-regional disputes through dialogue. Membership expanded with Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and Cambodia (1999), forming today's ASEAN-10. The bloc operates by consensus and non-interference — the so-called ASEAN Way — institutionalized in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and the 2008 ASEAN Charter. ASEAN has built a dense web of economic and security forums, including the ASEAN Free Trade Area, the ASEAN Economic Community launched in 2015, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that entered into force in 2022. Yet consensus politics has strained under two pressures: the South China Sea disputes, where China's nine-dash-line claims clash with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei despite the 2016 arbitral ruling, and the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, which produced the largely unimplemented Five-Point Consensus. With Timor-Leste set to become the eleventh member, ASEAN faces debates over Myanmar's representation, a long-stalled Code of Conduct with China, hedging between Washington and Beijing under the Indo-Pacific Outlook, and digital and green economy integration.

Key players

United Nations Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Council was created by General Assembly Resolution 60/251 in 2006, replacing the discredited Commission on Human Rights. Composed of 47 elected members serving staggered three-year terms with regional allocation, it conducts the Universal Periodic Review of every UN member state, appoints Special Rapporteurs and independent experts, and convenes special sessions on urgent crises. It works alongside the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva and reports to the General Assembly. The Council has long been contested terrain. Critics point to the membership of states with poor human rights records, to Agenda Item 7 on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and to selective attention across crises. Successive U.S. administrations have alternated between engagement and withdrawal, while China, Russia, and like-minded states have pushed counter-narratives emphasizing sovereignty, development, and non-interference. Recent sessions have produced commissions of inquiry on Ukraine, Iran, and the occupied Palestinian territory, and resolutions on Sudan, Myanmar, and Nicaragua. Current debates include the human rights implications of generative AI, following OHCHR's B-Tech project and 2024 reporting, and the operationalization of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment recognized in GA Resolution 76/300, particularly for climate-displaced populations who fall outside the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Key players

Lok Sabha (Indian National Parliament)

Lok Sabha (House of the People), Parliament of India

The Lok Sabha, or House of the People, is the directly elected lower chamber of India's bicameral Parliament, established under the 1950 Constitution that emerged from the Constituent Assembly's drafting under B.R. Ambedkar. With up to 543 elected members representing single-member constituencies, it is the primary legislative body: money bills originate here, the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to it, and the Prime Minister must command its confidence. Sessions are presided over by the Speaker and broadcast through Sansad TV. Since independence, the Lok Sabha has been the central arena of Indian political contestation — from Nehruvian planning and the 1975-77 Emergency under Indira Gandhi, through coalition governments of the 1990s, to the BJP's majorities under Narendra Modi from 2014. The 2024 general election returned the BJP-led NDA to power but without an outright BJP majority, restoring a more competitive coalition dynamic with the INDIA bloc led by the Indian National Congress. Contemporary debates engaging the House include the Women's Reservation Act (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam) and its implementation, the impending delimitation of constituencies, the Uniform Civil Code, electoral bonds and campaign finance after the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling, agricultural policy and MSP guarantees, federal fiscal transfers, and India's foreign policy posture amid U.S.-China rivalry and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Key players

Bandung Conference, 1955

Bandung Asian-African Conference, 1955

The Bandung Conference convened in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, bringing together 29 newly independent or soon-to-be-independent states from Asia and Africa. Convened by the Colombo Powers — Indonesia, India, Burma, Ceylon, and Pakistan — it was the first large-scale assembly of states outside the Western and Soviet blocs, held against the backdrop of the early Cold War, the Korean armistice, the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and ongoing decolonization across Africa and Asia. Delegates debated colonialism (including French rule in North Africa and Dutch claims over West Irian), racial discrimination (notably apartheid in South Africa), nuclear weapons, and economic cooperation among poor states. Tensions ran high between pro-Western states such as Pakistan, Turkey, and Iraq, neutralists led by Nehru, Nasser, and Sukarno, and the People's Republic of China, represented by Zhou Enlai, who used the conference to break out of diplomatic isolation. The final communiqué endorsed Ten Principles drawing on the Panchsheel — including respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence. Bandung laid intellectual and political groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement, formally established at Belgrade in 1961, and for later Third World solidarity efforts including the G-77 and UNCTAD. As a historical crisis committee, delegates must navigate decolonization, Cold War alignment pressures, Taiwan and the offshore islands crisis, and the contested meaning of non-alignment.

Key players

GA Ad-hoc

General Assembly Ad-Hoc Committee

The General Assembly, established under Chapter IV of the 1945 UN Charter, is the only UN organ in which all 193 member states sit with equal vote. Beyond its six standing main committees, the Assembly regularly creates ad-hoc committees to handle issues that cut across mandates or require concentrated negotiation — historic examples include the 1947 Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, which produced the partition plan, the Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean, and more recently the Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime, which finalized a convention in 2024, and the Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, still unresolved after more than two decades. Ad-hoc committees operate by consensus where possible but ultimately report draft instruments or recommendations back to the plenary for adoption. They allow the Assembly to bypass Security Council deadlock under the logic of the 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution and to develop normative frameworks where no treaty body exists. They have become particularly important on transnational issues — cyber, AI, outer space resources, tax cooperation, and pandemic financing — where geopolitical fragmentation has slowed treaty-making elsewhere. Delegates in this committee should expect to define their own mandate within a contemporary gap in global governance, balancing the universality of the GA with the practical need for actionable, negotiable text that can survive plenary adoption.

Key players

Independence of Singapore agreement, 1965

Separation Agreement: The Independence of Singapore, 1965

Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia in September 1963 alongside Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak, in a merger championed by Lee Kuan Yew's People's Action Party and Tunku Abdul Rahman's Alliance government as a path to decolonization from Britain and a bulwark against communism. The union was fraught from the start: disputes over fiscal transfers and the common market, the PAP's challenge to UMNO on the peninsula in the 1964 federal election, communal violence in Singapore in July and September 1964, and ideological clashes over Lee's call for a 'Malaysian Malaysia' versus Malay political primacy. By mid-1965, Tunku Abdul Rahman concluded that separation was the only alternative to further unrest. Negotiations conducted in secrecy between Goh Keng Swee, Eddie Barker, and Malaysian counterparts produced the Independence of Singapore Agreement, signed on 7 August 1965 and given effect by the Constitution and Malaysia (Singapore Amendment) Act passed by the Malaysian Parliament on 9 August. Singapore became an independent and sovereign state that day, with Lee Kuan Yew famously weeping on television. The agreement settled citizenship, defense cooperation, trade, and the status of the Malaysian dollar and shared institutions. As a historical committee, delegates must work through the terms of separation against the backdrop of Konfrontasi with Sukarno's Indonesia, the British military presence east of Suez, Cold War alignment, communal politics, and Singapore's stark economic vulnerability as a city-state without a hinterland.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Empire Chicago 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)Abolished national-origins immigration quotas African Union (AU)Article 1 — Union of States Article 23 — Prohibition of Traffic in Human Beings and Forced Labour Article 249 — Parliament's Power to Legislate on State List

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

Empire Chicago 2026

Nov 13–16, 2026Chicago, United StatesIn-person

Registration open

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

United States

Host nation and primary legal system focus.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

World Health Organization (WHO)

Key players

European Union (EU)

Key players

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Key players

United Nations Human Rights Council

Key players

Lok Sabha (Indian National Parliament)

Lok Sabha (House of the People), Parliament of India

Key players

Bandung Conference, 1955

Bandung Asian-African Conference, 1955

Key players

GA Ad-hoc

General Assembly Ad-Hoc Committee

Key players

Independence of Singapore agreement, 1965

Separation Agreement: The Independence of Singapore, 1965

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Empire Chicago 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Key terms & resources

Frequently asked questions

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Country perspectives

Topics & background

Key terms & resources

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

2025-2026 Santa Clara County Mock Trial Invitational

16th Annual University of Cincinnati High School Mock Trial Invitational

University of Denver Denver Duels Invitational 2026

Montgomery County High School Mock Trial Competition 2026

Great Chicago Fire Invitational XII

21st Annual Ramblin' Wreck Invitational Tournament

Related conferences

2025-2026 Santa Clara County Mock Trial Invitational

16th Annual University of Cincinnati High School Mock Trial Invitational

University of Denver Denver Duels Invitational 2026

Montgomery County High School Mock Trial Competition 2026

Great Chicago Fire Invitational XII

21st Annual Ramblin' Wreck Invitational Tournament