International Court of Justice (ICJ)

Home

Intl Court of Justice (ICJ)

International Court of Justice (ICJ)

Committee Description

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) resolves international disputes between countries, and provides an opinion on legal issues of international law to requesting United Nation agencies. Thirty students are expected to abandon their national prejudices and become impartial judges of international law. Each of the Excellencies will be placed into teams of three or four members. Each team represents one side of a case and only four cases will be presented at the program for a total of eight teams.

Each Excellency will be assigned to a case as a team. Once your role has been assigned students should immediately begin familiarizing themselves with the case and potential arguments. In order to adequately prepare for the conference each team is required to prepare a brief for presenting their side of the case. A copy of all final briefs must be served by December 10th to both your opposing counsel and the program staff. Each attorney will receive a copy of the submitted briefs and evidence at the conference.

Realizing the importance of teamwork in this chamber, ICJ delegates should possess the following qualities: hard working, able to work in a long distance team environment, demonstrate leadership skills, quick to respond or question on their feet, great speaking technique, dedicated to the project at hand, and preferably a second year delegate.

2010 ICJ Cases

Last Updated on Monday, 01 February 2010 14:53

ICJ Assignments

FINAL BRIEFS WERE DUE ON DECEMBER 18th. if you have not yet submitted your brief, please email your Submission AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

BRIEFS RECEIVED AS OF JANUARY 4th:

Brief_in_Support_of_Djibouti.doc

Brief_in_Support_of_France.doc

Brief_in_Support_of_Croatia.doc

Brief in Support of Serbia

Brief_in_Support_of_Ecuador.doc

Brief_in_Support_of_Colombia.doc

Brief_in_Support_of_Mexico.doc

Brief_in_Support_of_the_United_States_of_America.doc

BRIEF - due December 18th.

MUN_ICJ_Brief_Manual_2010.doc

ICJ_2010_Brief_Assignments.xls

A brief is the guiding document that justices will use to prepare themselves to hear your presentation of the case as well as use as a reference when deliberating your case. The brief consists of several distinct sections:

Introduction.
It is designed to give the team a brief opportunity to give the historical background of the case in no more than one single-spaced page.

The Statement of Facts.
Within this section, the team is given the opportunity to provide an orderly written presentation of the facts directly involved with the case at hand. This should be an unbiased, non-debatable presentation and should be three to four single-spaced pages in length.

Argument.
In this section, you present your case supporting or opposing each charge. You present the evidence in this section in whatever manner you choose- biased or unbiased, chronologically or otherwise, but keep in mind that the most direct, simple, and convincing case is often times the best for the court to read and understand. The length of this section will differ depending on the number of charges in the case.

Conclusion.
Reinforces the strong points of your argument and makes the final push for why your side of the case is the correct side to rule in favor of. A good conclusion will remind the court of the charges and outline with specific facts as to why or why not the charges are valid.

Table of Authorities.
Is essentially a bibliography for the information you used in your brief. A short inclusion of the surrounding context for any information you use in your brief should be included in the Table for the benefit of the court at the conference. Also included at the beginning of the brief should be a title page and Table of Contents.

MEMORANDUM - due November 13th.

ICJ instruction memo 2010.doc

A memorandum is a one-page memo describing the basic information of all cases to be heard by the respective court. Four paragraphs should be written in total, one per case. Each paragraph should include the facts, principle issue(s), arguments from both sides, and a list of potential resources for each case.