What level of education is required for participation in the Jessup Competition?

The competition is designed for college-level students.

What format does the Jessup Competition follow?

The competition simulates a dispute before the International Court of Justice, involving both written memorials and oral arguments.

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Jun 9, 2026Berlin, GermanyIn-person

Registration open

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is a prestigious international law moot court for college-level students. The competition provides a unique opportunity for participants to engage with complex issues of public international law, simulating a dispute before the International Court of Justice. The event is hosted in DEU, offering a significant platform for aspiring international legal professionals.

Country perspectives

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

Germany

As the host nation, DEU provides the logistical and academic infrastructure for the competition, emphasizing its commitment to international legal education and the rule of law.

Role in topic

DEU's role as the host city highlights its position as a significant center for international legal discourse and education in Europe. The country's legal traditions and its engagement with international institutions underscore the importance of such events.

United States

The competition originates from the USA and reflects its historical influence on international legal education and the development of moot court traditions.

Role in topic

The competition's origins in the USA demonstrate the country's long-standing engagement with international law and its role in fostering legal education globally. Many foundational principles of international law are debated and refined within US academic institutions.

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 gained traction since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, after which a cascade of edicts barred women and girls from secondary and university education, most paid employment, public parks, gyms, and travel without a male guardian. Iran has faced parallel accusations following the 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent crackdown on the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, particularly through intensified enforcement of mandatory hijab laws. Civil society campaigns, UN special rapporteurs (notably Richard Bennett on Afghanistan and Javaid Rehman on Iran), and a coalition of states have argued that systematic, institutionalized gender-based oppression should be recognized as a distinct international crime, analogous to the crime of apartheid codified in the 1973 Apartheid Convention and Article 7 of the Rome Statute, which currently defines apartheid only in racial terms. The legal debate centers on whether existing instruments — CEDAW, the Genocide Convention, customary prohibitions on persecution as a crime against humanity — already capture such conduct, or whether a new treaty norm and codification is required. Negotiations on the ILC Draft Articles on Crimes Against Humanity, now before the Sixth Committee, became a focal point in 2024 when several states proposed expanding the definition of apartheid to include gender, while others objected on grounds of treaty conservatism and concerns about reopening the Rome Statute consensus. In September 2024 the ICC Prosecutor's Office sought arrest warrants against Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for gender persecution, marking the first such ICC action and sharpening questions of attribution, individual versus state responsibility, and the legal threshold between persecution and apartheid.

Key players

Recognition of Governments Following an Unconstitutional Change of Power

International law has long distinguished between the recognition of states and the recognition of governments, but recent coups — Mali (2020/2021), Guinea (2021), Sudan (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), Niger (2023), and Gabon (2023) — have made the latter question acute. Regional bodies such as ECOWAS, the African Union, and the OAS routinely suspend coup-installed regimes under their respective democratic charters (the AU's Lomé Declaration and African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance; the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter), while third states diverge in how they treat the resulting authorities at the UN, in bilateral relations, and in domestic courts handling sovereign immunity, asset claims, and treaty performance. The core legal dispute concerns the criteria for recognition — effective control (the traditional Tinoco/Lauterpacht line) versus democratic legitimacy and constitutional continuity — and the consequences of withholding recognition. UN credentials battles, such as the 2021 Afghan and Myanmar credentials standoffs before the General Assembly Credentials Committee, illustrate how non-recognition can leave a seat vacant or with a displaced delegation. Disputes also reach the ICJ and arbitral tribunals through questions of who may bind the state, espouse claims, or invoke immunities. Today, the practice is fragmented: Niger's CNSP, Myanmar's SAC, and Venezuela's competing claims have all generated inconsistent state practice, complicating sanctions regimes, frozen assets litigation, and the law of state succession in obligations.

Key players

State Responses to a Mass Influx of Asylum Seekers

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol oblige states to grant access to asylum procedures and to respect non-refoulement, but they were not designed for sudden, large-scale movements. UNHCR's 1981 Conclusion No. 22 and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration extended protection concepts to mass influx situations, and the EU adopted the 2001 Temporary Protection Directive — first activated in March 2022 for Ukrainians, covering over four million people. Comparable regimes have governed Venezuelans in Latin America under the Quito Process, Syrians in Türkiye and Lebanon, Rohingya in Bangladesh, Sudanese in Chad and Egypt, and Afghans in Pakistan and Iran. Each has tested the balance between burden-sharing, temporary protection, and the prohibition on collective expulsion. Legal controversy has intensified around externalization and deterrence: the UK–Rwanda asylum partnership (struck down by the UK Supreme Court in 2023), the EU–Türkiye Statement of 2016, Australia's offshore processing in Nauru and PNG, Italy's protocol with Albania, and U.S. Title 42 and 'safe third country' arrangements have all drawn challenges before the ECtHR, CJEU, and treaty bodies. Pushbacks at the Poland–Belarus, Greece–Türkiye, and U.S.–Mexico borders raise non-refoulement and Article 3 ECHR questions, while the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees promotes responsibility-sharing without creating binding obligations. The pending dispute is how far derogations, accelerated procedures, and 'instrumentalization' laws may go before they breach the Refugee Convention, the ICCPR, and regional human rights instruments.

Key players

Sanctions Designations Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Targeted sanctions — asset freezes, travel bans, and sectoral restrictions on listed individuals and entities — have grown exponentially since the late 1990s, with OFAC's SDN List, the EU consolidated list, and the UK's OFSI list now together comprising tens of thousands of designations. To manage this scale, sanctions authorities and private compliance firms increasingly rely on machine-learning tools for screening, network analysis to detect sanctions evasion, and pattern recognition to identify front companies, shadow fleets, and crypto wallets. OFAC's 2023 enforcement actions against virtual currency mixers and its 2024 sanctions on Russian shadow-fleet tankers reflect designations heavily informed by algorithmic analysis of shipping, financial messaging, and blockchain data. Using AI to generate or substantially support listing decisions raises novel international-law and due-process questions. Sanctions designations already strain procedural rights: the UN 1267 Ombudsperson mechanism was created in response to Kadi I and II at the CJEU, and the ECtHR's Al-Dulimi judgment imposed minimum review standards. AI-assisted designations sharpen concerns about explainability, evidentiary thresholds, bias in training data, and the ability of listed parties to challenge decisions whose reasoning may be opaque even to the listing authority. Issues also arise around extraterritoriality, secondary sanctions on third-state nationals, the use of private vendors' proprietary models, and state responsibility under the ILC Articles when algorithmic error causes wrongful deprivation of property or freedom of movement. No binding international framework yet governs these practices.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27, 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

Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27

Jun 9, 2026Berlin, 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

As the host nation, DEU provides the logistical and academic infrastructure for the competition, emphasizing its commitment to international legal education and the rule of law.

Role in topic

United States

The competition originates from the USA and reflects its historical influence on international legal education and the development of moot court traditions.

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

Recognition of Governments Following an Unconstitutional Change of Power

Key players

State Responses to a Mass Influx of Asylum Seekers

Key players

Sanctions Designations Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court 2026/27, 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

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Soldan Moot 2026

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Soldan Moot 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

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Soldan Moot 2026

Related conferences

10th Jewish Law Moot Court 2026

Hugo Sinzheimer Moot Court Competition 2026

Jessup Moot Court 2026/2027: Informationsveranstaltung und Bewerbung

Soldan Moot Court 2026

Nuremberg Moot Court 2026

Soldan Moot 2026