What level of education is required for participation?

The Oregon State Mock Trial Championship is open to high-school level students.

Where is the event held?

The event takes place in Portland, USA.

What is the format of the competition?

The competition follows a mock trial format, simulating courtroom proceedings.

Oregon State Mock Trial Championship 2026

Mar 14–15, 2026Portland, United StatesIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The Oregon State Mock Trial Championship is a high-school level competition held in Portland, USA. This event brings together students from across the state to engage in simulated courtroom proceedings. Participants develop critical thinking, public speaking, and legal argumentation skills, culminating in a statewide contest.

Country perspectives

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

United States

Host and primary participant nation, emphasizing youth legal education.

Role in topic

As the host nation for the Oregon State Mock Trial Championship, the USA plays a central role in promoting legal education and civic engagement among its high-school students. These competitions reflect the nation's commitment to developing future legal professionals and informed citizens through experiential learning.

Topics & background

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

Revisiting the 1948 Genocide Convention in the 21st Century

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 in the shadow of the Holocaust, was the first human rights treaty of the United Nations era. Drafted largely by Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term 'genocide,' it defines the crime as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, and obligates states parties to prevent and punish it. The Convention has since underpinned tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the creation of the International Criminal Court, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine endorsed at the 2005 World Summit. Despite its foundational status, the Convention's application has been uneven. Recognition of mass atrocities as genocide — from Cambodia and Srebrenica to Darfur, the Yazidis under ISIL, the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang — has often come late, politically, or not at all. The narrow legal definition, the high evidentiary bar for proving specific intent (dolus specialis), and the exclusion of political and social groups have drawn sustained criticism. The Convention also says little about prevention mechanisms beyond referral to UN organs, leaving enforcement hostage to Security Council politics. Current debates have intensified through high-profile ICJ cases — Gambia v. Myanmar (2019), South Africa v. Israel (2023), and Ukraine v. Russia — which test the scope of state obligations to prevent genocide extraterritorially and the use of provisional measures. Member states are reconsidering whether the 1948 framework can address modern realities such as cultural genocide, online incitement, AI-enabled targeting, and atrocity crimes occurring alongside, but not neatly within, the Convention's definition.

Key players

BRICS and the Reshaping of Global Leadership

The BRIC grouping emerged from a 2001 Goldman Sachs analysis identifying Brazil, Russia, India, and China as rising economies, and was institutionalized as a political bloc with a first leaders' summit in 2009. South Africa joined in 2010, creating BRICS. Originally a loose coordination forum among large non-Western economies, the bloc has progressively built its own institutions, including the New Development Bank (2014) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, designed as alternatives to the Bretton Woods system dominated by the United States and Europe. The 2023 Johannesburg summit launched the most significant expansion in BRICS history, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with most joining in 2024 and Indonesia following in early 2025. The enlarged grouping now represents roughly 45 percent of the global population and over a third of global GDP measured by purchasing power parity. Member states have advanced discussions on local-currency trade settlement, payment infrastructure independent of SWIFT, and reform of the UN Security Council and IMF voting shares. BRICS faces internal tensions that complicate its claim to coherent global leadership. India and China remain strategic rivals with an unresolved border dispute; Russia's war in Ukraine has divided members' positions; and the bloc spans democracies, autocracies, and theocracies with divergent economic models. The central question for delegates is whether BRICS represents a genuine alternative pole in a multipolar order, a coalition for incremental reform of existing institutions, or a symbolic platform whose ambitions exceed its capacity for collective action.

Key players

Stochastic Terrorism and Incitement in the Information Age

Stochastic terrorism describes the use of mass public communication — typically by political figures, media personalities, or influential online accounts — to demonize a group or individual in ways that statistically increase the likelihood of violence by unaffiliated actors, without explicit operational direction. The concept gained prominence in academic and journalistic discourse after attacks such as the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack, the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, and the 2022 Buffalo supermarket attack, each of which involved perpetrators steeped in online ecosystems of dehumanizing rhetoric. The phenomenon sits uneasily within existing international and domestic legal frameworks. ICCPR Article 20 obliges states to prohibit advocacy of hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, and the 2012 Rabat Plan of Action provides a six-part threshold test. Yet most national laws still require a direct, imminent link between speech and action, a standard ill-suited to diffuse online radicalization. Platform algorithms that amplify outrage, encrypted channels, and transnational audiences further complicate attribution and jurisdiction. States remain divided on response. Western democracies generally emphasize platform self-regulation, transparency rules such as the EU Digital Services Act, and narrowly tailored hate-speech laws, while expressing concern about chilling free expression. Other governments, including Russia, China, and several Gulf states, invoke incitement frameworks to justify broader controls on dissent. The committee must consider how to address rhetoric that predictably produces violence without empowering authoritarian censorship or eroding protections under Article 19 of the ICCPR.

Key players

Climate Change and Resource-Driven Conflict

Climate change is now widely recognized as a 'threat multiplier' that interacts with existing political, ethnic, and economic fragilities to heighten the risk of conflict. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2021–2023) documented links between climate stress and food insecurity, displacement, and competition over water and arable land. The UN Security Council has debated climate-security since 2007, with thematic resolutions and the 2018 establishment of the Climate Security Mechanism, though a draft resolution to formally integrate climate into Council mandates was vetoed by Russia in 2021. Concrete flashpoints are multiplying. Disputes over Nile waters among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia have intensified with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan is under strain. Sahelian states face overlapping crises of drought, jihadist insurgency, and pastoralist-farmer conflict. Small island developing states confront existential threats to territory and statehood, raising unresolved questions about maritime boundaries and climate-displaced populations. Melting Arctic ice is reopening contested sea lanes and resource claims among Russia, the United States, Canada, and Nordic states. The committee must grapple with whether existing frameworks — the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, the Loss and Damage Fund operationalized at COP28, and humanitarian and refugee law — are adequate to address climate-linked conflict, or whether new instruments are required. Central debates concern climate finance obligations of historic emitters, the legal status of climate-displaced persons (not currently covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention), and whether the Security Council should treat climate change as a matter of international peace and security.

Key players

Attacks on Critical Energy Grid Infrastructure

Energy grids — generation plants, transmission lines, substations, pipelines, and the control systems that run them — have become priority targets in both kinetic and cyber conflict. The 2015 and 2016 cyberattacks on Ukraine's power grid, attributed to Russian state-linked actors, were the first publicly confirmed cases of cyberattacks causing blackouts. Since 2022, Russia's systematic missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure have constituted one of the largest deliberate campaigns against civilian energy systems in modern conflict. The 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and recurring attacks on Red Sea cables underline how vulnerable transnational energy and data arteries have become. The legal framework is fragmented. International humanitarian law protects civilian objects under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I, and dual-use infrastructure attacks are constrained by proportionality and distinction. Tallinn Manual 2.0 addresses cyber operations but is non-binding. UN GGE and OEWG processes have produced voluntary norms against attacking critical infrastructure in peacetime, but enforcement is weak and attribution often contested. Domestically, frameworks such as the U.S. NERC CIP standards, the EU NIS2 Directive, and equivalent regimes vary widely in rigor. Delegates face three intersecting challenges: deterring state and state-aligned attackers in the absence of clear thresholds for response; protecting increasingly digitized and decentralized grids that integrate renewables, smart meters, and cross-border interconnections; and responding to non-state threats ranging from ransomware groups to domestic extremists, as seen in the 2022 attacks on North Carolina substations. The question is whether new binding instruments — or a dedicated protocol on critical infrastructure protection — are politically achievable.

Key players

International Regulation of Military and Civilian Drones

Unmanned aerial systems have moved from niche military assets to ubiquitous tools of warfare, law enforcement, commerce, and civil society in roughly two decades. The U.S. began routine armed drone strikes after 2001, generating sustained debate over targeted killing, sovereignty, and the law of armed conflict. The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Houthi campaign in the Red Sea, and confrontations in the Sahel have demonstrated that cheap loitering munitions and commercial quadcopters now shape battlefields once dominated by expensive manned platforms. The regulatory landscape is patchwork. The Missile Technology Control Regime (1987) addresses larger UAVs but excludes most modern small systems. The Wassenaar Arrangement covers some dual-use exports. ICAO governs civil aviation safety but has limited writ over military use. International humanitarian law applies to armed drones, yet debates persist over signature strikes, civilian harm, and the legal threshold for self-defense against drone attacks. Autonomous and AI-enabled drones raise additional concerns addressed in the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on lethal autonomous weapons, where states remain divided over whether to negotiate a binding instrument. Proliferation is the central problem. Turkish, Iranian, Chinese, and Israeli manufacturers have made advanced drones widely available to states and non-state actors alike, while consumer drones costing a few hundred dollars are routinely weaponized. Delegates must consider export controls, counter-UAS measures, civil airspace integration, privacy and surveillance concerns, and whether to advance a dedicated treaty or strengthen existing regimes.

Key players

State-Sponsored Terrorism

State sponsorship of terrorism — the provision of funding, weapons, training, intelligence, or safe haven by governments to non-state armed groups conducting attacks against civilians or foreign states — has been a feature of international politics throughout the post-1945 era. Cold War proxy conflicts saw both superpowers support insurgent movements; the post-1979 period brought Iranian backing for Hezbollah and other regional actors; Libya under Qaddafi was implicated in the Lockerbie and UTA Flight 772 bombings; and Pakistan's relationship with groups operating in Afghanistan and Kashmir has been the subject of decades of dispute. The U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, currently designating Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba, remains influential but is a unilateral instrument. The international framework rests on Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), adopted after the September 11 attacks, which obligates all states to criminalize terrorist financing and deny safe haven, and on the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) enforces compliance through its grey and black lists, which significantly affect access to global finance, as seen in pressure on Pakistan (2018–2022) and the listing of Iran and North Korea. Yet the UN has never agreed on a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, blocked for over two decades by disagreement over whether to exclude national liberation movements and state armed forces. Contemporary debates focus on attribution and accountability for hybrid threats: Russian-linked sabotage operations in Europe, Iranian support for Houthi, Hezbollah, and militia attacks across the Middle East, allegations of cross-border targeted killings, and the use of proxy cyber actors. Delegates must consider how to strengthen sanctions, evidence-sharing, and judicial cooperation without entrenching politicized designations.

Key players

Regulating Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets

Cryptocurrencies emerged with the 2009 launch of Bitcoin and expanded rapidly into a multi-trillion-dollar global asset class spanning thousands of tokens, stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and non-fungible tokens. The sector's growth has been punctuated by crises — the 2014 Mt. Gox collapse, the 2022 implosions of Terra/Luna, Celsius, and FTX, and recurring exchange hacks — that exposed gaps in consumer protection, custody standards, and cross-border supervision. At the same time, crypto rails have been used for sanctions evasion, ransomware payments, and illicit financing by actors including North Korean state-linked groups. Regulatory responses have diverged sharply. The European Union adopted the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which entered into force in stages through 2024, establishing the first comprehensive regional framework. The United States has pursued enforcement-led regulation through the SEC and CFTC alongside emerging legislation on stablecoins. China banned cryptocurrency trading and mining in 2021 while developing its e-CNY central bank digital currency. El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 with mixed results. The Financial Action Task Force has extended its 'travel rule' to virtual asset service providers, and the IMF and FSB issued a joint synthesis paper in 2023 urging coordinated global standards. Core unresolved questions include the legal classification of tokens (security, commodity, currency, or sui generis), the supervision of decentralized protocols without clear legal entities, the systemic risk posed by stablecoins, the macroeconomic and monetary-sovereignty implications of widespread adoption in developing economies, and the design of central bank digital currencies. Delegates must balance financial inclusion and innovation against consumer protection, financial stability, and sanctions enforcement.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Oregon State Mock Trial Championship 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Bosnia v. Serbia (Genocide)1973 Diplomatic Protection Convention 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks 9/11 Attacks Administrative State Atomic Energy Act, 1962

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

Oregon State Mock Trial Championship 2026

Mar 14–15, 2026Portland, United StatesIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Country perspectives

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

United States

Host and primary participant nation, emphasizing youth legal education.

Role in topic

Topics & background

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

Revisiting the 1948 Genocide Convention in the 21st Century

Key players

BRICS and the Reshaping of Global Leadership

Key players

Stochastic Terrorism and Incitement in the Information Age

Key players

Climate Change and Resource-Driven Conflict

Key players

Attacks on Critical Energy Grid Infrastructure

Key players

International Regulation of Military and Civilian Drones

Key players

State-Sponsored Terrorism

Key players

Regulating Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Oregon State Mock Trial Championship 2026, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Bosnia v. Serbia (Genocide)1973 Diplomatic Protection Convention 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks 9/11 Attacks Administrative State Atomic Energy Act, 1962

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

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