The Bond University champions - Julien du Vergier, Kate Mitchell, Kristen Zornada, Heidi Rulfs and Lauren Ferguson Bond Un

The team are now the World Champions, having defeated Yale and Utrecht University in the Grand Final of the competition held on 20 February 2009.

Twenty teams from 14 countries competed in the ICC Trial Competition, including the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Russia, India, China, the Netherlands, South Africa and Canada. Each team consisted of five members, including two researchers and three advocates acting for the prosecution, defence and victims. Bond’s champion team competed in three preliminary rounds, each advocate presenting for 45 minutes.

This included intensive questioning by an eminent five judge panel of notable experts in the area of international criminal law. The students answered a case in International Humanitarian Law, commonly referred to as ‘the law of war’. The fictitious case involved war crimes and crimes against humanity and the students were required to have a detailed knowledge of the Geneva Convention.

The Bond University champions - Julien du Vergier, Kate Mitchell, Kristen Zornada, Heidi Rulfs and Lauren Ferguson - are all undergraduate students and the team was coached by Senior Teaching Fellow Joseph Crowley of the Bond University Law Faculty. Kate Mitchell won award for ‘Best Oralist’ in the ICC Trial Competition and Kristen Zornada won ‘Best Victim’s Counsel’. The ICC Trial Competition is the third mooting competition Bond University has won within the past twelve months.

The University also took first place in the International Intellectual Property Law Mooting Competition in Beijing, China in August 2008 and the National Family Law Mooting Competition in Australia, in March 2008.