The Belgrade Law Faculty team, after winning the last year competition, participated at the Fifth Monroe E. Price International Media Law Moot Court Competition, held in Oxford from 21 to 24 March 2012. Aside from the final round held in Oxford, Competition included two regional rounds, in India, for the universities from the South-East Asia and Qatar, for the Middle East universities, as well as one national round in Afghanistan. 54 teams from 21 countries from five continents competed in total. 33 teams qualified to the final round in Oxford on the basis of their written memorials and results in the qualification rounds.

During the qualification rounds our students competed against the teams from Nigeria, England and India.Despite two victories, our team did not proceed to the quarterfinals. Although they were equal in the oral presentations, the team of the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India, the overall winner of the Competition, won on the basis of the points gained for written memoranda. Out team was in the end ranked 14th.

The students that represented University of Belgrade Faculty of Law at the Price Moot Competition were: Katarina Zarkovic, Tamara Momirov, Marko Zivanovic, Bogdan Basara, Tijana Radovanovic and Dejan Vulovic. Team was coached by lecturer Vuk Cucic.

The Monroe E. Price Moot consists in solving a hypothetical problem dealing with international media law. This year’s problem involved the standard media law issues, such as relationship between the freedom of expression and the right to privacy, extent of the right to privacy of public persons, protection of children and minors in the media, legitimate limitations of the freedom of expression with the aim of protection of national security, as well as contemporary issues of regulation of the freedom of expression on the social networks, responsibility of the intermediaries on the Internet, geo-location and supervision on the Internet. Main legal source is the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose Article 19 guarantees the freedom of expression. Other legal sources are the European Convention of Human Rights, the American Convention of Human Rights, the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the conventions and recommendations of other international organizations, especially of the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Students also researched the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, Human Rights Committee, US Supreme Court, as well as national legislations worldwide.

The Moot consists of two parts. The first one is preparation and submission of written memoranda. There are two memoranda to be written: one for the Applicant, website operator, and the other for the Respondent, the state.  The writing of these memoranda usually takes almost five months.  The second one is presentation of oral arguments before three judges of imagined Universal Court of Human Rights. During the qualification rounds each team has three hearings. The Belgrade Law Faculty team appeared twice on behalf of the state and once on behalf of the website operator.At each hearing, each speaker is graded by each of the three judges. This gives two thirds of points in one match. The remaining points are derived when the points for memoranda of two teams are compared. The best 8 teams, ones with most victories, proceed to elimination rounds.

The Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade uses this opportunity to once again express its gratitude to all the institutions and individuals who helped the preparation of our students through their generous donations. Apart from the Faculty of Lawof the University of Belgrade, the pool of this year’s donors consists of: the Ministry of Culture, Information and Information Society, the OSCE Mission to Serbia and Stojkovic&Prekajski Law Firm.