Human rights: in just 20 years the René Cassin Competition has made its mark worldwide.

Originating from a student initiative, the René Cassin Competition dedicated to the Nobel Peace Prize winner has come into its own as an internationally recognised benchmark thanks to which the case-law of the European Court in Strasbourg circulates far beyond the geographical boundaries of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The XXIst instalment of the René Cassin European Human Rights Competition opened in Strasbourg on Tuesday 29 March and will end on Friday 1 April with the final round contested according to tradition in the hearing room of the European Court of Human Rights.

20 years after it was first held in 1985 with four teams competing, mainly from Strasbourg, the “Cassin” as it is affectionately called by students has made its mark as the world’s leading French-language competition in the legal field.

The idea of a competition of this kind grew up early in the 1980s when a handful of Strasbourg-based students were keen to import into Europe the “law moot courts”, the mock trials and legal competitions for students carried on by English-speaking universities especially in the United States, the principle of which is to plead an imaginary case while abiding by current rules of law and precedent.

While they made no secret of their debt to American academic tradition, the originators wished to place their initiative in a European context. This naturally prompted them to choose human rights which, in Europe, have a unique outreach thanks to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and its supervisory machinery instituted by means of the European Court of Human Rights. The title of the competition dedicated to René Cassin is a tribute to the winner of the 1968 Nobel Peace Prize, the father of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and President of the European Court of Human Rights in 1965.

Still managed by an association of Strasbourg students called Juris Ludi, “law games” in Latin, the René Cassin competition quickly asserted itself as the model for competitions on human rights throughout the world, including countries whose language is not French. As a result, the 2005 competition brings together 50 teams from 16 countries and three continents, such as Canada, the United States, Colombia, Moldova, Russia, Romania and Slovenia. In all there are nearly 200 participants exercising 70 jury members who include sitting judges of the European Court of Human Rights.

Nadiejda Nikitina, a Ukrainian student in Strasbourg who chairs Juris Ludi, says that the success of the competition is closely linked to the blending of Juris Ludi’s student spirit with the rigour of the scientific council responsible for annually drawing up the case to be tried. Yves Gautier, Professor and President of the Scientific Council, puts it in a nutshell: “Every year the Scientific Council tries to make the practical case the focus of a legal thought process striving to transcend the facts adduced in the case. While some issues may appear to be already settled by Court precedent, others demand a minimum of imagination in so far as case-law provides no signposts.”

This is how the case proposed in 2005, underneath its inconsequential outward appearances involving a young woman fond of tinned tomatoes, a secret service chief, and ice-pick, a mysterious serum ZZZ code 4992 and a romance, very seriously raises the question of police interrogation and psychiatric internment in the light of the European Convention on Human Rights. As Nadiejda Nikitina points out, “The presence of members of the Court on the jury and the endeavours of numerous Council of Europe legal specialists to ensure the competition’s legal quality have been decisive in establishing the scientific reputation of the “Cassin” and making it the authoritative competition which it has now become.”