The 2004 Philippine Jessup Team: Future legal eagles soar

There’s nothing more rewarding than earning the label "world champion," and nothing sweeter than winning it for the glory of your country. With the perfect blend of pride and humility, eight students from the Ateneo de Manila School of Law did both.

In a clean sweep of individual matches leading up to the final round, the Philippine Jessup Team took the tile as overall champion of the 2004 Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition held in Washington, DC on April 3. The team was led by their coach Silvia Jo Sabio, and is composed of oralists Frederick Ryan "Diegs" Castillo, Justine Adrienne Guerrero, Ryan Mancera, Aimee Dabu, and Andrew Fornier. They received administrative support from Ateneo Society of International Law members, most especially, next year’s training team composed of Jomini Nazareno, Jovita Larrazabal and Gretchen Aquino.

I consider myself lucky to have been a spectator and fan of these amazingly talented young people. From the first time I saw them compete against the team from Montenegro, I was floored by their performance. Diegs and Justine delivered their arguments flawlessly, and answered all the questions of the judges by directly quoting specific provisions from treaties and decisions from international courts. And they did all these without bringing any documents with them to the podium, unlike the other teams, every one from the Philippine team argued their case purely from memory.

I was not alone in my awe of each of the team’s mastery of their arguments and their supporting authorities. After each match, members of the team would receive praises from spectators, competitors from other teams and even judges themselves. "I heard from a delegate from India that the people in the competition (were) talking about the team," Larrazabal later found out. "The judges and the teams we went up against were all impressed by the performance of the oralists. They were saying that the Philippines was the team to beat."

One oralist from Germany even went on to say that when she saw Diegs walk up to the podium without bringing anything with him she was intimidated, more so when she heard him cite cases and the exact provisions of treaties verbatim in answering the questions.

Aimee, Ryan, and Andrew, I was told, delivered equally impressive presentations. In fact, Andrew and Justine were ranked as the eighth and seventh best oralists, respectively, among more than 200 in the whole competition.

"After each match, delegates from other countries would come up to us and profusely shower us with praises," says Ryan Mancera. "That was a form of affirmation that can hardly be matched. The judges themselves, since our preliminary rounds, told us to keep up the good work and that we would go a long way."

Getting To The Finals

The journey to the final round was long and grueling. The team had to go through four preliminary round matches against the teams from the University of Montenegro, the University of Toronto (Canada), Yerevan State University (Armenia), and Novi Sad University (Serbia). They swept all four matches, and was ranked fifth among all the 94 teams in the preliminary rounds.

The Philippine team went on to defeat the teams from Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena (Germany) in the octafinals, Monash University (Australia) in the quarterfinals, and the University of Vienna (Austria) in the semi-finals. In each case, the Philippine team was the only team to defeat these teams in the entire week. But by Friday afternoon, the Philippine team knew it was advancing to the finals to be held the following day, against the National University of Singapore.

Diegs Castillo says that getting to the Finals "was just really all about focus," considering the difficulties the team had. He recalls that "much of the problem we had in Washington had to do with (lack of) funding. We had to stay at a cheap hotel away from the competition (while the other teams stayed in the Wyndham where the matches were held), and (we) lived on a very limited budget."

Because money was so tight, the team had to prepare for the matches in whatever ways they could: additional research through computer access of friends studying in Georgetown Law School, borrowing books also through the same friends, practicing their arguments at the mall or at the open grounds of the Georgetown Law School, reading in cafés. And when the competition week started, team members walked from the Metro to the Wyndham in freezing temperatures and carried sandwiches with them to the rounds. In-between-matches, the team took to staying at the foyer of the ballrooms where the matches were held, with some members sitting on the carpeted floor because the couches were not enough – this was where they would rest and prepare for the next match. Right before the final round, Andrew and Diegs were running high fevers, yet managed to make their way to the competition grounds.

Inspite of all these, the members remained positive and focused. "God was always with us," Diegs says. "He lifted each one of us into a new and higher level. I feel like we had God and Mother Mary in each one of our rounds really guiding us, and ultimately that made all the difference."

Mancera adds: "Surviving the Jessup experience requires not only physical endurance and intellectual aptitude. Getting the Cup involved intense emotional struggles for each of us. Two oralists argued in each match and we could not afford to lose a single match. The pressure was just tremendous. We saw each other go from extreme states of self-confidence to self-doubt. However, we reassured each other, and that saw us through."

Celebrations

The judges were unanimous. It took a moment for the announcement to sink in (maybe because the presiding judge had announced it so suddenly), and then the Philippine team rose to their feet in celebration, quickly followed by everyone else in the room – who had spontaneously given them a standing ovation.

"It was so incredible," Sabio says. "After all the hardships and tribulations (and there were so many), when everything else outside of the actual match that could go wrong, did, the team made it, and so strongly and impressively! I was so proud of them – each and every member worked so hard, and the outpouring of accolades and praises for the team’s performance merely confirmed my own conviction of this team’s strength. I wished Fr. Joaquin Bernas, Atty. Sedfrey Candelaria, Atty. Cesar Villanueva and everyone else who had helped us on this road could have been there to share in that moment. It was truly an amazing and humbling experience."

Justine remembered a story her mother had told her the night before the finals about this small town football team who made it to the big league. "When they got to the stadium, they were overwhelmed and in awe at the size and magnitude of everything. Then their coach asked one of them to measure the dimensions of the field. As it turns out, the field was the exact same size as their home field. So the coach said, see, it’s the same field you’ve been winning on, spent the best games of your lives on. It’s just in a different city.

"That’s how we felt. It was for me both a dream come true and an honor to appear that Saturday before the most distinguished people in international law," continued Guerrero, "before your peers who were the best from all over the world, and more importantly, on behalf of our school and our country. Jo (Sabio) had always been saying this team was special, I felt we were truly blessed. And as our judges from the preliminary rounds came up to us in the advanced rounds to wish us luck and say we were truly amazing, I felt like we were indeed special and blessed."

The Road To Washington

Unlike previous years, the team representing Ateneo Law was selected from two separate law school organizations: the Ateneo Society of International Law and the St. Thomas Moore Debating Society. The "hybrid" team, as coach Jo Sabio fondly calls it, enabled the selection of only the best of the best representatives. They then had to face-off with their counterparts from the University of the Philippines to determine who would represent the country in Washington, DC.

Justine Guerrero described the whole process as the "toughest Jessup team ever." Internal and external hurdles, stress, frustration were all part of the game. After placing 40th last year, Justine recalls: "Diegs, Ryan and I made a promise to come back and to try to win it. I figured, we owed it to ourselves (as well as) all those who came before us who dreamt of getting that Cup and supported us in all our efforts to get it this time. And as people came up one after the other to congratulate us and say we had done a great job, things still seemed surreal. We had actually won. And I was humbled because all these teams, who were the best from their own countries, came out to watch us and thought we had done well."

Having a team with a mixed background was not without its difficulties. "Starting out as a hybrid team was very difficult, especially when faced with individuals who had different styles of working," Aimee Dabu recollects. "What was unquestionable, however, was that each member had the common dream and common goal of winning the very first Jessup cup for the Ateneo, spurred on by an overwhelming passion for international law and moot court."

The Competition

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is arguably the most prestigious, internationally recognized moot court competitions, created in the United States in 1959 by the International Law Students Association. The 2004 International Rounds involved 94 teams from 80 countries, drawn from various teams from 529 schools in over 85 countries, making it the largest year in the history of the Jessup.

This is the 45th year of the Jessup Competition, and the second time in the history of the match that a team from the Philippines has won the Jessup Cup. In 1995, a team from the University of the Philippines defeated a team from the University of Western Australia to win the Cup.

The Philippines is only the fifth country (including Canada, the United States, Australia, and Singapore) to win more than one Jessup Cup.

Moot court is a form of debate wherein law students argue a hypothetical case before a tribunal. In case of the Jessup, it is presented before actual members of the International Court of Justice and internationally renowned international law experts, who sit as judges in the competition. Thus, convincing these people of the strength of your case is no small feat.

But the Jessup is more than competition. "It’s (also about) seeing and sharing with people from all over the world the love for the rule of international law, the commitment to make some changes in the world we have right now and the hope that in our respective parts of the world, things would get better," says Castillo. "During orientation, it was such a powerful sound to hear delegates from 80 countries cheering on the team from Afghanistan or Vietnam as they were announced for the roll call, or the sight of the Bosnia-Herzegovina team shaking hands with Yugoslavia. Jessup is just a powerful thing, and I think everyone of the delegates felt that."

Although the final rounds are held in March, the competition actually began seven months before with the distribution of the compromis, which is the background of the problem to be argued.

"Winning the Cup took a lot of hard work, pain, blood, sweat and tears especially for this team. It took seven grueling months of putting in the hours, staying up late at night into the wee hours of the morning to make the written pleadings, then getting up early just like an ordinary student to prepare for our classes. Jessup was 24/7 on my mind especially since I had the burden of being team captain," continues Diegs. "People in school thought we were crazy, killing ourselves with so much work. But as I tell everyone, it really is worth it all in the end."

Filipino Pride

In a country that many citizens of which feel like they can’t compete against other "better" nations of the world, these young people have proven their competence, and have made the rest of the world notice. They serve as a reminder of what the Philippines can accomplish if it only knew the contents of the vault of talent it has locked in the face of national crisis and controversy.

Filipino achievement is not a pipe dream. However, neither is the road to success laid out for us. The lesson we can learn from the Philippine Jessup Team is that unity, hard work, faith, and perseverance are the materials we need for that road to be paved.