U of Cebu Law team wins Stetson’s 2022 moot court world finals

University of Cebu Stetson mooting champs Golda Lim (second from left) and Michaela Portacos flanked by UC School of Law Dean Al-Shwaid Ismael de Leon and assistant coach, Atty. Kristine Joy Argallon. INQUIRER/Elton Lugay

NEW YORK—Hurdling four rounds of competition including the Championship Round held for three days in Gulfport, Florida earlier this month, the University of Cebu (UC) School of Law became the international finals champion of the 26th Annual Stetson International Environmental Moot Court Competition last April 9.

The winning team is composed of oralists Golda Marie Lim, who was awarded the best oralist in the final round, and Michaela Portarcos; researcher and team manager Kathleen Marie Omana; head coach Atty. Lievj Raoni Alimangohan and assistant coach Atty. Kristine Joy Argallon; and adviser Atty. Rose Liza Eisma-Osorio.

Alumni mentors also assisted the team in advancing from local competitions into the international finals of the world’s largest moot court competition devoted to global environmental challenges.

“This win, it’s really very precious because we’ve been wanting to win the Stetson,” Portarcos told INQUIRER.net during an interview in New York, where the team proceeded to take their return flight to Manila.

“The first time we joined it was in 2015,” recalled Argallon. “I was in the first team. I was still a researcher at that time and every year we joined after that, we had almost-wins.”

This is the third time that UC qualified for international place, having earlier competed in 2015 and 2018. For this year’s final round, UC competed against the University of the Philippines on questions relating to protected areas and armed conflict. During the preliminary rounds, each team argued four times, taking the applicant and respondent’s side at each turn.

“The promotion of environmental law and awareness has always been one of the primary advocacies of the law school. Its former professor, Atty. Gloria Estenzo-Ramos, who is now the vice president of Oceana Philippines, and Atty. Osorio are well-respected global environmental law experts,” Al-Shwaid de Leon Ismael, dean of UC’s law school, told INQUIRER.net.

UC also participates in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, which covers public international law.

“For now, we want to focus on these two due to limited resources,” Ismael said.

Survival mode

Lim, who was second place oralist during the preliminary rounds before winning the best oralist award during the finals, recalled the team being on survival mode for months. She personally went one step at a time, first focusing on qualifying for the international competition and just hoping to perform well enough in order to make it to the finals. Her perspective completely changed after the team had won the much-coveted prize.

Stetson is the world’s largest moot court competition devoted exclusively to global environmental challenges. INQUIRER/Elton Lugay

“I thought this was unreachable,” she told INQUIRER.net. “I thought this was a far distant thing that would have happened and it actually woke me up a bit to my own effort because I feel like sometimes I downplay everything that we’ve done. I also don’t want to think about it too much because you want to work, you want to keep working so we don’t think about it too much. But then after we won, I thought about it and I was like yeah, we put in so much work for this, so much effort and tears. So yeah, why would it be a surprise if we won it?”

Moving forward, Lim plans to use the best oralist award to remind herself of what had been achieved with the team’s efforts. “Sometimes we just like to play things small but it’s not small, it’s a big win. And it’s a big deal and it took a big effort,” she said.