On 29 March – 2 April, students of the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University Dovydas Gudžiūnas, Simona Budreikaitė, Karolina Pociūtė and Justas Rupšys were representing Vilnius University in international rounds of the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition. The team was accompanied by curator PhD student Gintarė Pažereckaitė. The competition is aimed at stimulating interest in the subject of freedom of expression, as well as, the influence of information technologies and media on human rights in modern society.
The team performed perfectly in the written part of the competition (procedural documents prepared by the team received 88 and 90 points (out of 100 possible)), which led them to participate in the international – oral – competition rounds held at Oxford University. Vilnius University team met with the teams from the universities of Queen Mary (United Kingdom), Melbourne (Australia) and Benjamin N. Cardozo (USA). Although the Lithuanian team failed to continue into the subsequent competition stage, they achieved excellent results in the written part, that is to say, they overcame the Queen Mary University 2: 1, Benjamin N. Cardozo University 3:0 and lost only to the University of Melbourne 1: 2. Also, during the oral round against the University of Melbourne, Lithuanian team members Pociūtė K. and J. Rupšys were evaluated very high, respectively, by 100 and 96 points (out of 100 possible). The students received praises from the judges for confident responding to questions, excellent legal knowledge and in-depth analysis of the case.
Moot court at the University of Oxford gave an opportunity to meet the best students from all over the world, as well as, judges that are known as professionals in protection of freedom of expression (for example, the European Court of Human Rights Judge Boštjan M. Zupančič, policy chief of social network Facebook Monica Bickerton, lawyers specialized in media and data protection Jon Blake, Nathaniel L. Bach, Robert Balin and others).
The winner is the team from Singapore (Singapore Management University), which, in the finals, overcame the Indian representatives (Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat).
