The Asia Pacific Regional Round of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition was held online from May 15 to 16. 38 participating teams from China, India, Australia, Singapore and etc., attended the competition. Du Yijia, Hu Xinyuan and Yang Huiming, junior undergraduates at CUPL, under the guidance of Ms. Tang Ya and her coach assistant Xu Yiwen, both from the School of International Law, lost by one point to the champion in memorandum, i.e. team from India’s University of Pune, and won the third place after two rounds of fierce competition in two days. The team achieved the best result for teams from countries where English is not an official language. Besides, Du Yijia won the Outstanding Oralist award.
CUPL first participated in the competition in 2003. Since then, CUPL has achieved excellent results for consecutive years: in the China round, CUPL team has won the first and second place for many times and has been the champion for nine times in succession; in the Asia-Pacific regional round, CUPL team has won the Best Memorandum award in 2009, the Lachs Spirit award in 2017, the Top 10 Oralists awards in 2018, and has been among the joint runners-up in the Asia-Pacific regional round in 2020.
The Manfred Lachs International Space Law Moot Court Competition was initiated by the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) in 1992. Named after Manfred Lachs, a renowned international jurist and the longest-serving former Justice of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the competition examines law students’ comprehensive skills in legal analysis, searching, reading, writing, and oral arguments by simulating a lawsuit between two sovereign states before the ICJ. It is one of the world’s three highest-level moot court competitions as its annual finals are held in the presence of three sitting Justices of the ICJ.
