The 14th Annual International Environmental Moot Court Competition concluded yesterday with the Law Society of Ireland, Cork as Applicant facing the University of Maryland School of Law as Respondent. This year's simulated case before the International Court of Justice focused on "Beaked Whales and Marine Seismic Surverys." Student attorneys made arguments under the Espoo Convention, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the duty to prevent transboundary harm under customary international law. More than 80 teams competed worldwide with 19 teams advancing to the international finals in Florida. And the 2010 winner is . . . More

In judging different moot court competitions during the past two months, I have noticed several competitors did not understand the difference between signatories and parties to a treaty. This posting provides a brief overview of when a treaty is legally binding upon a State and a few examples. More

Consider the following unattributed sage words of wisdom as special "gifts" to your 2010 team from last year's competitors. They asked me not to mention their names, saying that their highest reward will be watching you benefit from their advice. The list was originally circulated in 2009. Still wondering what to say in court, what types of questions judges will ask, what to do if you don't know the answer, or which advocacy strategies will sway the judges? Here, I offer commentary to accompany the Top 21 Reverse Tips for Moot Court Competitions. More

Nearly five years after the Grokster case transformed the freewheeling world of free online music sharing into the fee-based business model of iTunes, newspapers are arguing for similar legal enforcement of their intellectual property rights online. The enemy is no longer peer-to-peer (P2P) software. Rather, the new alleged enemy is "news aggregators," such as Google News. At last week's FTC Workshop on Journalism and the Internet, a panel of nine industry experts addressed, "Emerging Business Models for Journalism." The 9-person panel included two lawyers: Srinandan Kasi, General Counsel for the Associated Press and Steven Brill, a graduate of Yale Law School and co-founder of Journalism Online, Inc. Update: the archived webcast is now available. More