Moot Court
The Children's Rights Moot Court Competition 2025
- Date
- Monday 7 April 2025 - Wednesday 16 April 2025
- Address
- Online
Children's Rights Moot Court 2025: Call for Teams
The bi-annual Children's Rights Moot Court (CRM) is back, offering a unique opportunity for students around the world to engage with pressing issues in international children's rights law. This fully online competition spans four dynamic days, featuring preliminary rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and a grand final. Teams will be judged by experienced legal experts, providing invaluable insights and feedback.
Why participate?
The CRM has a proud history of fostering passionate advocacy, with previous editions hailed as transformative experiences for students. Participants get the chance to sharpen their legal reasoning and advocacy skills while networking with a diverse group of peers and professionals. See more information here.
Open to all university teams, with 2 to 4 students per team, the competition is ideal for Bachelor's or Master's students in law. Even non-law students may be eligible if they possess sufficient legal knowledge to meet the challenge. Importantly, this is a competition for emerging talent, so prior professional pleading experience is not required.
Why is this exciting?
The CRM is not just a moot—it’s a gateway to becoming a future defender of children's rights. By participating, you’ll contribute to finding solutions that directly impact the lives of children worldwide. With the competition held online, it is an inclusive moot court experience, allowing teams from all corners of the globe to engage without the barrier of travel costs or visas.
Don't miss this chance to be part of something bigger! Form your team, register, and prepare to make your mark in the CRM 2025. The world of children's rights needs fresh voices—yours could be one of them!
Children's Rights Moot Court Structure
The participating student-teams will be pleading a fictitious case which involves a dispute between a state and a child/group of children. This dispute is brought before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, under the Third Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure (OPIC). It is up to the teams to defend the two parties to the best of their abilities. Each student-team has to represent the Applicant (i.e. child) and the Respondent (i.e. state) respectively, both in writing and through oral arguments.
Children's Rights Moot Court Case
The CRM involves a fictitious case which involves a dispute between a state and a child/group of children. For each edition, Leiden Law School’s Department of Child Law assigns a duly qualified person to draft the case. The case for the 2025 edition will be published in November.
Rules of Procedure
The Rules of Procedure for the Children’s Rights Moot Court Competition provide detailed guidelines for team composition, registration, case publication, submission of memorials, and the conduct of oral arguments. They outline the scoring structure, penalties for violations, and the evaluation process by an international panel of judges. The Rules of procedure will be made available by the 30th of October 2025.
Written memorial
Each team participating in the moot court competition will prepare an Applicant's memorial and a Respondent's memorial. Each memorial must not exceed 10.000 words.
Oral Pleadings
During the CRM, each university team will plead four times, twice as Applicant, twice as Respondent. A team will not face another team twice during the preliminary rounds. Each court session consists of ninety (90) minutes of oral pleadings. Applicant and Respondent have forty-five (45) minutes each to plead. Each team may reserve up to ten (10) minutes for rebuttal or surrebuttal Per team, two Counsels will be representing the Applicant and the Respondent.
Order
The order of the pleadings at one moot court session is as follows:
- Applicant: Counsel 1
- Applicant: Counsel 2
- Respondent: Counsel 1
- Respondent: Counsel 2
- Rebuttal (Applicant Counsel 1 or 2)
- Surrebuttal (Respondent Counsel 1 or 2).
International Panel of Evaluation
The memorials for the CRM shall be judged by the International Panel of Evaluation.
All participating teams are invited to nominate two (2) duly qualified persons to be members of the International Panel of Evaluation. It is up to the discretion of the teams to decide who would qualify to act as a qualified person in this regard. One could think of teaching staff of a university, a professional practicing law at an organization, alumni or previous participants of the CRM. Each member of the International Panel of Evaluation will evaluate a minimum of three anonymous memorials (excluding the memorials of the nominating team). The nominated persons may in no way be involved with his/her nominating team, or its preparation.
Timeline
- No later than the 13 November 2024: Announcement of the Moot Court Case 2025.
- Wednesday 13 November 2024: Information Session
- Monday 13 January 2025: Registration deadline for teams
- Monday 20 January 2025: Submission of nominations for the International Panel of Evaluation
- Friday 31 January 2025: Submission of Applicant and Respondent memorials via email to the Administrator
- Monday 24 March 2025: Teams will receive the Opponent’s Memorials via email.
- Monday 7 April to Wednesday 16 April 2025: Children's Rights Moot Court Competition.
There will be no registration fees for teams this year.
Organisation
For all questions relating to the CRM 2025, please contact the moot court administrators via: crmootcourt2025@bakermckenzie.com