What is the purpose of the Jones Day German National Rounds?

The Jones Day German National Rounds serve as the qualifying stage for university teams from DEU to advance to the international rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. It is a competition for the college level.

Where will the German National Rounds take place?

The German National Rounds will be held in Berlin, DEU.

What is the format of the competition?

The competition is a moot court, which involves simulated court proceedings where participants argue a hypothetical case before a panel of judges. This format is designed for the college level.

2027 Jones Day German National Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition

Feb 24–27, 2027Berlin, GermanyIn-person

Registration open

The Jones Day German National Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition will convene in Berlin, DEU. This event serves as a crucial national qualifying stage for the larger international competition, bringing together university students from across DEU to engage in simulated international legal proceedings. Participants will argue complex cases before panels of distinguished judges, honing their advocacy skills and deepening their understanding of public international law.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 2 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Germany

Host and participant in the national rounds, emphasizing legal education and international law.

Role in topic

As the host nation for these national rounds, DEU plays a pivotal role in facilitating the development of international legal expertise among its university students. The competition in Berlin, DEU, provides a platform for future legal professionals to engage with complex international legal issues and to represent their academic institutions on a national stage.

United States

Originator of the Jessup Competition, promoting international legal education globally.

Role in topic

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition originated in the USA and has since grown into the largest and most prestigious moot court competition in the world. The USA's role is foundational, as it established the framework and continues to support the global network of national rounds, including those held in DEU, to advance international legal education.

Topics & background

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

Allegations of Gender Apartheid Under International Law

The term 'gender apartheid' has emerged in international legal and human rights discourse to describe systematic, institutionalized regimes of domination and segregation imposed on the basis of gender, drawing analogy to the crime of apartheid as defined in the 1973 Apartheid Convention and Article 7(2)(h) of the Rome Statute. While those instruments expressly cover racial groups, advocates — including UN Special Rapporteurs on Afghanistan and on Iran — have argued since 2022 that the conduct of the Taliban toward Afghan women and girls, and certain practices in the Islamic Republic of Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, meet the structural threshold of apartheid and should be codified as an international crime. The Taliban's edicts banning women from secondary and higher education, most forms of employment, public parks, and travel without a male guardian have been central to this debate. The legal question is twofold: whether existing customary international law and treaty crimes (persecution as a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute, the prohibitions in CEDAW, and the ICCPR's non-discrimination provisions) already capture such conduct, and whether the ongoing ILC Draft Articles on Crimes Against Humanity should be amended to add 'gender' alongside 'race' in the apartheid definition. A coalition of states and civil society groups has pressed for that amendment, while others have cautioned against diluting the historical specificity of apartheid or warned of definitional overreach. The issue now sits at the intersection of the Sixth Committee's negotiations on a crimes against humanity treaty, ongoing ICC scrutiny of the situation in Afghanistan, and ICJ proceedings concerning gender-based discrimination. For a Jessup-style moot, the dispute typically concretizes around state responsibility, the obligation to prevent and punish, non-recognition obligations, and the extraterritorial reach of asylum and sanctions regimes.

Key players

Coups d'État and the International Law of Contested Governments

International law has long struggled with how to treat governments that come to power by unconstitutional means. The traditional 'effective control' test, articulated in cases such as Tinoco (1923), held that recognition turns on factual authority over territory and population, not on the legality of the seizure of power. Over the last three decades, however, regional bodies — notably the African Union through the Lomé Declaration (2000) and the Organization of American States through the Inter-American Democratic Charter (2001) — have layered a 'democratic legitimacy' criterion onto recognition practice, suspending or sanctioning governments that emerged from coups. A wave of military takeovers in the Sahel (Mali 2020-2021, Burkina Faso 2022, Niger 2023, Gabon 2023), as well as the 2021 takeover in Myanmar, has reopened the debate. The contested-government scenario raises a cluster of legal problems: who may speak for the state at the UN and in treaty bodies (as illustrated by the UN Credentials Committee's deferrals on Afghanistan and Myanmar); whether the ousted government retains capacity to consent to foreign intervention or to bring claims before international courts; the validity of acts performed by the de facto regime, including treaty signature, debt issuance, and resource concessions; and the lawfulness of third-state measures ranging from non-recognition and sanctions to threatened armed intervention (as ECOWAS contemplated against Niger in 2023). In Jessup practice, such facts typically generate disputes over state responsibility for acts of the de facto authorities, the doctrine of necessity, the obligation of non-recognition of situations created by serious breaches of peremptory norms, and the interplay between Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and regional collective action. The unresolved tension between effectiveness and legitimacy remains the doctrinal core of the topic.

Key players

State Responses to Mass Influxes of Asylum Seekers

The legal architecture governing mass influx situations rests on the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the principle of non-refoulement (now recognized as customary international law and reinforced by Article 3 CAT and Article 7 ICCPR), and regional instruments such as the 1969 OAU Convention and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration, which extend refugee status to those fleeing generalized violence. UNHCR's Executive Committee Conclusions, particularly No. 22 (1981) on temporary protection in mass influx situations, attempt to bridge the gap between individualized refugee status determination and the practical realities of large-scale arrivals. The Global Compact on Refugees (2018) reaffirmed responsibility-sharing but remained non-binding. Recent episodes have stress-tested these rules. The displacement of more than six million Venezuelans across Latin America, the 2015-2016 movements toward Europe, Türkiye's hosting of roughly 3.5 million Syrians, Bangladesh's protection of Rohingya from Myanmar, Poland's response to Ukrainian arrivals under the EU Temporary Protection Directive, and the instrumentalized border crisis between Belarus and the EU have all generated litigation and political controversy. States have invoked national security, public order, and 'safe third country' arrangements to push back, externalize, or detain asylum seekers — practices challenged before the European Court of Human Rights (N.D. and N.T. v. Spain; M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece), the Inter-American Court, and UN treaty bodies. The contemporary debate centers on the lawful limits of border control during mass arrivals: the permissibility of pushbacks, offshore processing (as in UK-Rwanda and Australia-Nauru arrangements), the threshold for derogation, the scope of non-refoulement at land and sea borders, and the obligations of transit and destination states toward one another. In a Jessup setting, the topic typically crystallizes around state responsibility for collective expulsion, the duty to cooperate, and the lawfulness of countermeasures against states accused of weaponizing migration.

Key players

AI-Generated Sanctions Designations and the Limits of Due Process

Targeted sanctions — asset freezes, travel bans, and sectoral restrictions imposed on named individuals and entities — have become the dominant instrument of contemporary economic statecraft, administered through the UN Security Council's 1267/1989/2253 ISIL-Al-Qaida regime, EU CFSP measures, and unilateral programs such as those of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. The due process deficits of listing decisions have generated decades of jurisprudence: the ECJ's Kadi I and Kadi II judgments, the ECtHR's Nada v. Switzerland and Al-Dulimi rulings, and the creation of the UN Ombudsperson for the 1267 regime all reflect efforts to reconcile sanctions effectiveness with rights to a fair hearing, effective remedy, and reasoned decisions. The accelerating use of artificial intelligence and large-scale data analytics in sanctions enforcement and designation — to map ownership and control networks, screen transactions, and identify candidates for listing — introduces a new layer of legal complexity. Algorithmic systems may rely on opaque training data, produce probabilistic outputs that resist meaningful judicial review, embed proxy biases, and complicate the attribution of responsibility between the designating state, the software vendor, and any underlying intelligence source. Questions arise under international human rights law (ICCPR Articles 14 and 17), the law of state responsibility, and emerging soft-law instruments such as the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021) and the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI (2024). For moot purposes, the topic typically presents a state challenging another state's reliance on AI tools to generate or sustain a designation against its nationals or state-owned entities, raising issues of evidentiary standards, the right to know the reasons for listing, secondary sanctions and extraterritoriality, and whether automated designation engages heightened obligations of human oversight and explanation.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 2027 Jones Day German National Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Administrative State Carceral State City-State Committee on the Status of Women in India (Towards Equality Report 1974)Act of State Act of State Doctrine

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

2027 Jones Day German National Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition

Feb 24–27, 2027Berlin, GermanyIn-person

Registration open

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 2 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

Germany

Host and participant in the national rounds, emphasizing legal education and international law.

Role in topic

United States

Originator of the Jessup Competition, promoting international legal education globally.

Role in topic

Topics & background

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

Allegations of Gender Apartheid Under International Law

Key players

Coups d'État and the International Law of Contested Governments

Key players

State Responses to Mass Influxes of Asylum Seekers

Key players

AI-Generated Sanctions Designations and the Limits of Due Process

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 2027 Jones Day German National Rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Administrative State Carceral State City-State Committee on the Status of Women in India (Towards Equality Report 1974)Act of State Act of State Doctrine

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Key terms & resources

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Key terms & resources

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026