About
The Hamilton Lugar / ILSA Undergraduate International Law Moot Court Competition is a simulation of oral argument before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Teams argue both sides in a fictional dispute between two countries. Colleges and universities can enter up to five teams of two students apiece.
The Competition is open to undergraduate students in the United States. It is co-hosted and co-administered by the Hamilton Lugar School of Global & International Studies at Indiana University.
The Competition is based upon the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, which ILSA has administered annually since 1959. Now in its 67th year, the Jessup Competition is the largest competition in the world for law students, with more than 800 schools in 106 countries last year.
The 2026 Competition will take place 26 Feb-1 Mar at Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, IN. The Registration fee is $250 for the first team registered from a given school, and $200 for each team thereafter. Spots are limited.
Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.
Further details about the Competition will be released shortly, including competition schedule, competition problem, and rules.
Basic Materials
Click to Expand
These Basic Materials are intended to give teams a strong foundation with which to begin their research. Teams are not limited to these materials and are strongly encouraged to go beyond them in their research for the Competition. ILSA may update this list on an ad hoc basis.
2017 Jessup Competition Materials
The 2025 ILSA Hamilton Lugar official problem is derived from the facts underlying the 2017 Jessup Compromis, The Case Concerning the Sisters of the Sun. As a consequence, the following materials are made available to competitors (with the twin cautions that (1) the facts of this case are in many ways different than the Sisters of the Sun, and (2) international law has developed since these documents were written).
- Bench Memorandum of the 2017 Jessup Competition
- Best Applicant Memorial of the 2017 Jessup Competition (University of the Philippines)
- Best Respondent Memorial of the 2017 Jessup Competition (University of Queensland, Australia)
Treaties
- UN Charter
- ICJ Statute
- Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
- 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property
- 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects
Cases and Awards
U.N. Documents and Other Materials
- Articles of Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts
- UN General Assembly Resolution 63/124 (Draft Articles of Transboundary Aquifers)
- UN Guiding Principles of Unilateral Declarations
- UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Advisory Note, Repatriation Request for the Yaqui Maaso Kova, U.N. Human Rights Council, Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (16 June 2020)
- Miles Jackson and Federica Paddeu, The Countermeasures of Others: When Can States Collaborate in the Taking of Countermeasures?, 118 AJIL 231 (2024)
- Gabriel Eckstein, International Law for Transboundary Aquifers: A Challenge for Our Times, 115 AJIL Unbound 201 (2021)
Rules
Registration Fees
| NUMBER OF TEAMS | COST (USD) |
| 1 | $250 |
| 2 | $450 |
| 3 | $650 |
| 4 | $850 |
| 5 | $1050 |
