- Contributed
Final-year law students, Conway Blake and Ky-Ann Lee.
TWO JAMAICANS are now the toast of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, Barbados, after winning a major international Moot Court competition.
Final-year law students, Conway Blake and Ky-Ann Lee, both of Montego Bay, have not yet come down from the high of winning the 2004 Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition held in Washington D.C from May 23 to 28.
They and their law colleagues Monique Robinson and Marcia McFarlane, also from Jamaica, created history when they reached the semi-finals of the nine-year-old competition. It was the second time an English-speaking team had reached that far. But Blake, 21, and Lee, 25, reached a new level by becoming the first English-speaking contestants to win.
Law lecturer and coach Dr. David Berry explained that the Spanish-speaking countries usually have the advantage because the fact pattern they test is the most current law, which is in Spanish and is not translated for a couple of years.
"This year the fact pattern tested basic rules and they tested law that is not developed so we were just on the same foot as everyone else," Berry said. They all cried when they were announced the winners, and Lee said being in the finals was "surreal."
"We were just trying to work hard. Every night before a match we did our arguments or we would find more cases or try to make our arguments more airtight," Blake said.
He said one judge who judged them twice was impressed and noted that in two days their arguments were "substantially different." They listened to the judges' comments and other arguments and used them to improve. "The people we are most grateful to are our coach Berry and the Faculty of Law that has supported us throughout the entire competition, through the selection process, preparing and being in Washington," Lee said.
Blake also thanked UWI, with its "scarce resources and tight budget", for assisting them. He noted the competition also promoted the university, and the Caribbean.
THE FIRST ROUND
He explained the first round was very competitive and when they were selected from their peers they were "happy" but never over-confident.
"We had the privilege of mooting in the preliminary rounds with not only English-speaking teams [but] Spanish-speaking teams, which was very interesting because it was a translator round and the Spanish was translated simultaneously when we were speaking." The judges were law professors; some came from the European Union, Nigeria, and different United Nations bodies. In the final round, president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Dr. Sergio Garcia Ramirez was the judge.
The Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition is at the highest level of oral advocacy, Berry explained, and noted the teams had to write comprehensive written arguments called memorials and present 45 minutes of oral arguments "which is quite extensive and it is tremendously interrupted."
Ten students from the UWI went to Washington, six went to the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition and four to the Inter-American Moot Court.
Forty-seven teams competed this year from the Americas, South, Central and North; Lee and Blake competed against the Universidad de los Andes team from Colombia in the final round.
The hypothetical fact pattern looked at human rights cases ranging from challenges by indigenous people to a South American state's hydrocarbon resource (oil) development plans. The human rights violations included property rights, judicial protection, participation in government, and legal recognition as a person.
Blake and Conway, who lived in the same district in Montego Bay, Jamaica, before attending UWI, will continue the friendship when they begin their final leg of their legal journey, at the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, together.
