The Osgoode Jessup Mooting team has won the Ronald St. John MacDonald Award for the Best Memorial in the 2005 Jessup International Law Moot Competition, held recently in Victoria. The Osgoode team consisted of Jason Mangano, Mark Labenski, Maria Konyukhova, Sonya Chikhman and Amer Mushtag. As the top Memorial in the Canadian round, the Osgoode Memorial will advance to the International Competition to be held in Washington in March. The Osgoode team also won the award for the best Respondent Memorial. A composite plaque, recording all previous winners of this award as well as this year’s winning Osgoode team, will be hung in York’s Osgoode Hall Law School.
Meanwhile, the Osgoode Arnup Cup team of Derek McKay and Frances Brennan finished second in this year’s Arnup Cup Competition, and will now advance to the Sopinka Cup, the national trial advocacy competition to be held in Ottawa in March. Osgoode made it to the Arnup finals where they made an excellent presentation on behalf of the prosecution. Although nosed out by Queen’s for the regional crown, the top two teams advance to the national final.
In other good news, the Osgoode team of Wesley Booker and Paul Chodirker made the finals and placed second in the Canada-wide Mathews, Dinsdale and Clark Labour Arbitration Competition held Jan. 28 – 29. The University of Western Ontario nudged out Osgoode for first place only by “a hair,” according to one of the judges.
Inaugural Osgoode Cup National Undergraduate Mooting Competition
The inaugural Osgoode Cup National Undergraduate Mooting Competition will take place over the weekend of March 5-6 at Osgoode Hall Law School. Sponsored by the law firm of Beard Winter LLP, the Osgoode Cup is a mooting competition open to undergraduate students who have an interest in law.
Members of the public are invited to attend the competition, which will be held in Osgoode’s Moot Court Room and various other rooms throughout the law school on Saturday, March 5, from 9.30am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 3:30pm, and on Sunday, March 6, from 8:30am to 1:30pm.
This year’s competition will feature 12 teams from different Ontario universities and will be judged by a panel consisting of Superior Court judges and Osgoode Dean Patrick Monahan. In 2006, the Osgoode Cup will become a national competition and, thanks to the generosity of sponsors, students from outside Ontario will receive travel bursaries to enable them to participate in the competition.
“The Osgoode Cup is a fun way for students with an interest in law to get a taste of what it is like to act as lawyers in an appeal before real judges,” said Monahan.