JURIS LUDI Association

In November 1984, a group of Strasbourg students who were disappointed to discover that the only mooting competitions organised were in English and that none of them was in the human rights field decided to create their own competition. They named it after René Cassin, former President of the European Court of Human Rights and Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

Based on the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the competition was to be open to students from all round the world.

The students who set up the competition were concerned that participants’ debating conditions should be as near perfect as possible. What they needed was a highly efficient organising body, and so, at the same time as the competition itself, the Juris Ludi Association was created to run it.

The Association now has some thirty members, all students, and all volunteers, who, on top of their university studies, are busy all year round with the selection of teams and jury members, arranging board and lodging for them during the competition week and, above all, ensuring the competition goes ahead smoothly.

With the ever increasing number of participants, which caused the competition budget to rocket, Juris Ludi was quickly forced to find re-think the way it operated in order to become more efficient. Today the association is divided into different departments, each dealing with particular aspects of the competition (eg teams, jury, funding, book-keeping, organisation of the competition week, communication). At the top of the organisation there is a bureau consisting of the treasurer, secretary general, vice-chair and chair.

The Scientific Council, composed of law lecturers, Council of Europe officials, and barristers assists the association and ensures the competition maintains high legal and academic standards. It invents the fictitious case, answers questions, and harmonises the marking of students’ memorials and their scores awarded during the mock-trial.