Astronauts, space debris and laser beams are not words you normally hear in the court room, but for Curtin Business School law students Ricardo Napper, Rachel O\u2019Meara and Jocelyn Watts, words such as these and the laws that govern outer space have become much more familiar after the trio won the Asia-Pacific regional round of the prestigious Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court competition earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The students, coached by Associate Professor Vernon Nase and Assistant Coach Rowan Stotesbury, will be heading to Mexico later this month to compete in the world finals of the competition alongside three regional team finalists from Africa, America and Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were all just shell shocked!\u201d says O\u2019Meara, describing the moment they found out they had won the regional round. \u201cWe were excited but didn\u2019t fully process it. The semi-finals and grand finals were a
\nlot more intense than the general rounds. It was really exciting but it didn\u2019t fully hit us until we came back to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way!\u201d Watts laughs. \u201cIn October last year we were asking, \u2018There\u2019s a law in outer space?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A moot court competition simulates a real court hearing with participants analysing, researching and arguing both sides of an assigned legal issue in front of a panel of judges.<\/p>\n
The first round of the competition involved the students writing two 14,000 word memorials detailing the legal issues in the assigned case. The case detailed liability issues with space debris and commercial spaceflight services.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very rigorous process to say the least. You have to research the law and apply it to the facts,\u201d says Watts.<\/p>\n
The students met up to three times a week, with meetings lasting as long as seven hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very first draft was the hardest for all of us,\u201d says Napper. \u201cAnd it was due on Christmas Day!\u201d adds Watts.<\/p>\n
Twenty teams of the 26 who applied made it through to the second round of oral advocacy, which took place in the Indian city of Bangalore.<\/p>\n
The students describe their trip to India as a chaotic, colourful and intense experience with amazing food and a lot of pressure.<\/p>\n
Watts explains, \u201cWe had the general rounds on Friday, an all-day conference on Saturday and the semi-finals and grand finals on Sunday \u2013 the day we also flew out!\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Meara adds, \u201cIt was very intense. We were trying to adapt to the new environment as well as participate in the competition and maintain our composure but we did end up doing really well in the general rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team is now preparing for the finals in Guadalajara, Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time, the people who sit on the panels and all the judges are leading experts in the field \u2013 the top space lawyers,\u201d says Watts. \u201cFor the world final, the judges are coming from the International Court of Justice, which is a daunting concept because I study public international law at the moment and read their judgements and articles \u2013 and now I could be speaking in front of them!\u201d<\/p>\n
Napper adds, \u201cOne of our biggest challenges will be the time difference. We\u2019ll be sleeping during the day time [for our body clock] and mooting during the night!\u201d<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Vernon Nase is clearly very proud of the students.<\/p>\n
“The great success of our students on the international stage is due to their many months of hard work,\u00a0dedication and\u00a0sacrifice\u00a0and attests to the ability of Curtin students to achieve a high level of international excellence,” says Associate Professor Nase.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t have done it without Rowan and Dr Nase,\u201d says O\u2019Meara. \u201cWe peaked at the right time. Dr Nase trained us not to be perfect initially so that by the time we got to the regional finals we\u2019d be at our best. It all came together in India and we\u2019re adopting the same approach for Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Astronauts, space debris and laser beams are not words you normally hear in a court room- but they are familiar to our Law students who moved on in the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":5798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-5797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":{"title":"Anne Griffin-Appadoo","url":"#","target":""},"photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Mooting-students-900x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Â鶹ֱ²¥"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 13:39:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=5797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}