The Australian Jessup Moot controversy of 2013 was a series of events affecting the results of the Australian round of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. The incident involved a series of scoring errors which resulted in erroneous seeding of teams and erroneous determinations about which teams had progressed throughout the Competition. As a result, the international administrator of the competition, ILSA, determined that four Australian teams rather than the usual two teams would compete in the international round in Washington, DC.
Contents
Errors in scoring
On 6 February 2013, the team from Murdoch University was informed by the competition administrators that the team had progressed to the quarter-finals. The team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) was informed that the team had not broken into the quarter-finals.
The next morning on 7 February 2013, the day of the quarter-finals, the UNSW team was told that there had been a scoring error, and in fact the team from UNSW should have been placed in the quarter-finals, seeded eighth (although it was subsequently discovered it should have been seeded fourth). The team from Murdoch was told that in fact it had not progressed to the quarter-finals, and was knocked-out of the competition.
On the afternoon of 7 February 2013, despite short notice and not having the previous night to prepare, the team from UNSW competed in a quarter-final moot against the team from the University of Sydney. Two of the three judges awarded the oral component of the moot to UNSW, but the third judge awarded the oral component of the moot to Sydney by one mark. Under the Australian Rules for memorial scoring, UNSW had a higher memorial score than Sydney. However, the International Rules for memorial scoring were mistakenly used by the administrators instead, with the administrators calculating that Sydney had the higher memorial score. Since the team with the lower memorial score must win all three judges in the oral component to win the moot, Sydney was declared the winner of that moot. As outlined below, it was later discovered that the incorrect memorial scoring rules had been used, which meant that Sydney did not in fact win the moot.
At the same time, the incorrect memorial scoring by the administrators meant that, had the correct memorial scoring rules been applied, it would have affected the seeding of the advancing eight teams. In particular, Sydney would have faced a lower-ranked team and not UNSW in the quarter-final. Indeed, none of the quarter-final pairings that were used in the competition would have occurred had the correct memorial scoring rules been applied.
Sydney then progressed to the semi-final round against the team from the University of Melbourne.
The semi finals took place on 8 February 2013. In its semi-final moot, the team from the University of Sydney beat the team from Melbourne, sending Sydney to the grand final. In the other semi-final, the team from Bond University won against the team from the University of Western Australia. This sent Bond to the grand final.
Further errors are identified
However, on 9 February 2013, shortly before the grand final took place, another scoring error was identified: the team from the University of Western Australia had in fact beaten Bond in the semi-final. The grand final went ahead between Sydney University and the University of Western Australia, and Sydney won.
Shortly before the dinner held after the grand final had taken place, it was discovered that all of the memorial scores had been marked incorrectly, as explained above. As a result of this error, the correct result was that the team from UNSW had actually beat the team from Sydney in the quarter-final. The correction of the error also meant that UNSW achieved, and was declared to have, the Best Applicant Memorial and the Best Memorial Overall.
Despite the errors, the team from Sydney was declared the winner at the dinner and UWA the runners-up. Then High Court Justice Dyson Heydon, who had judged the grand final between Sydney and the University of Western Australia, announced the winner. Justice Heydon noted that he and the other grand final judges (Helen Watchirs and Kristen Walker) were only called upon to adjudicate the grand final. All the while, debate was still taking place between coaches and administrators.
International rounds
After discussion and debate between representatives from different teams, and consultation with the international administrators, ultimately four teams were sent to Washington, DC, to compete in the international rounds, instead of the ordinary two teams that are sent from Australia. The teams sent to Washington were Sydney, the University of Western Australia, UNSW, and Murdoch.
The Executive Director of the International Law Students Association (the administrator of the international round) wrote to Australian teams:
"We extend our sincere condolences in particular to the student members of all of the teams in this year’s competition, as this is not how a national competition should be run and does not reflect the level of dedication, hard work and talent of the competitors."
ILSA determined that the errors did not warrant re-running the entire Australian competition, as the teams in the advanced rounds were given the opportunity to compete.
Despite these errors, Sydney Law School has stated a number of times without qualification that its team won the Australian round of the competition in 2013. Similar statements have been made by Melbourne Law School and the TC Beirne School of Law.
The team from UNSW ultimately achieved the highest ranking of all of the Australian teams, and it progressed to the international quarter-finals as did the team from Murdoch University. The Sydney Law School team was ranked as the third highest team in the preliminary rounds, and was defeated by Universitas Indonesia in the run-off rounds.
A member of the UNSW team, Emily Burke, was awarded best speaker in the world in the preliminary rounds and three other UNSW speakers were among the top 100 oralists. Three speakers from the Sydney Law School team were among the top 100 oralists, as were three speakers from the University of Western Australia team. One member of the Murdoch University team was also ranked in the top 100 category. The Sydney Law School team's memorials were the highest ranked submissions from among the Australian teams competing.
Subsequent investigation
At the request of the Jessup Association (Australia) (an unincorporated association of representatives of Australian law schools participating in the competition which was established in the 1990s, which has since that time provided unofficial financial and practical assistance to the Australian Administrator, and has recommended a person to ILSA to be the official Australian National Administrator), the conduct of the 2013 competition was investigated by Professor Peter Radan of Macquarie University.
Professor Radan noted that the main effects of the scoring errors made were: (1) the quarter-finalists were not correctly identified; (2) the eight quarter-finalists that competed in the knockout rounds were not correctly ranked; and (3) the international rules in relation to the allocation of memorial points, rather than the Australian Rules Supplement (which modifies some of the international rules), were applied throughout the competition.