Commissioner for Education participates as judge in international moot court competition in Rome

Commissioner for Education participates as judge in international moot court competition in Rome

Published March 23, 2026

The Commissioner for Education, Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent A. De Gaetano, participated in the finals of the 9th edition of the International Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion 2026, held in Rome on 13 and 14 March at the Rome Campus of St John’s University of New York.

The annual event, organised by a group of Italian academics (https://linktr.ee/imcclr) who are members of the Associazione di Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo, brings together law students from Europe and the United States. Participants argue a fictitious case before a panel of judges under conditions that closely reflect those of a real courtroom. This year’s event, as in previous years, was also supported by the International Consortium for Law and Religious Studies and by Brigham Young University of Provo, Utah.

Fourteen teams took part in this year’s finals: seven from universities in the United States, four from Italy, and one each from Poland, Hungary and Ukraine. The teams argued the case before two panels of judges. One panel, composed of American judges, simulated proceedings before the Supreme Court of the United States, applying the US Constitution and Supreme Court case law. The second panel, composed of judges of the European Court of Human Rights, simulated proceedings before the Strasbourg Court, applying the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols and case law.

The moot Supreme Court panel was composed of two serving federal judges and an American Emeritus Professor of Law and Political Science at the Université Internationale de Rabat of Morocco. The moot European Court of Human Rights panel included the Commissioner for Education, himself a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights, together with two other former Strasbourg judges, Ann Power-Forde from Ireland and Armen Harutyunyan from Armenia.