The University of Oxford defeated the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in the Fourteenth International Roman Law Moot Court Competition on 9 April 2021. Yun Kei Chow and Ben Stanley for Oxford, with colleagues Henry Fahrenkamp and Kacper Kryk at the virtual bar table, and Renata Nigrelli and Eleonora Mainardi for Naples, with Beatrice Oliviero and Nicole Grieco, mooted before a Grand Final bench consisting of Cambridge’s Regius Professor of Civil Law, Professor David Ibbetson FBA, Professor Marcelo Nasser (Universidad de los Andes), Mlle Céline Mathieu (Université de Liège), Professor Constantin Willems (Philipps Universität Marburg) and Dr Benjamin Spagnolo (Cambridge).
Third place went to the winners of the Small Final, the Université de Liège, and an Honourable Mention for fourth place to last year’s runner-up, the Universität Wien.
The Palma Optimi Oratoris (Best Oralist Award), which is evaluated across the whole competition, was awarded to Beatrice Oliviero, ahead of her Neapolitan colleague Nicole Grieco. Nektaria-Kalliopi Tsori was awarded the Honourable Mention for the third-placed oralist. This year’s Palma Scientiae Iuris (Hart Publishing Best Legal Analysis Prize) was won by Oxford’s Kacper Kryk.
The Fourteenth IRLM was conducted online, on account of the pandemic, but was hosted by Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Professor Dr Thomas Finkenauer and Mr Andreas Hermann made every conceivable effort to welcome participants from their various bedrooms, studies and (occasionally) lecture rooms. A superb virtual tour of the city and University mesmerised judges and students alike, while parallel dinners were enlivened by a Universities Challenge and, adding extra competition to the final meal, a competitive Thesaurus miraculorum Romanorum quiz, won by the inter-university team dubbed Disputationes.
Amongst other inspirations for the libellus was the Vogelherd Horse, now housed in the Museum Schloss Hohentübingen. The statuary and framed prints offered as prizes this year commemorate this equine theme in various guises and materials.