Russell Warner, a second-year law student at the Hague, Netherlands and a member of the Hugh Wooding Law School at the University of the West Indies’ St. Augustine campus in Trinidad defeated top-tier international competitors to take the first place trophy for Best Defense Counsel at the recent International Criminal Court Mooting competition held at the Hague, Netherlands.
Warner was a member of a team which included Johanan Doughlin (Grenada), Kevin Webster (Barbados), Mansergh Griffith (Trinidad) and coach Roger Ramgoolam (Trinidad) course director Hugh Wooding Law school.)
This was Hugh Wooding’s first entry into this competition. The teams presented arguments based on a hypothetical situation using principles of international criminal law applied by the International Criminal Court, and based on the Rome Statute of which Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory.
The qualifying rounds of the competition were held at Pace University in New York in February 2012. Of the 26 teams involved, early favourites Harvard and Yale failed to make it to the finals. The Hugh Wooding Law School team qualified as the sole representative from the Caribbean region. In winning the award, Russell Warner beat several international entrants from the USA, Osgoode Hall law school (Canada), Miami University and the University of Hong Kong.
Hugh Wooding law school is one of three law schools established by the Council of Legal Education, a body constituted to administer the vocational training aspect of legal education in the Caribbean. The other two are Norman Manley Law School (Jamaica) and Eugene Du Puch Law School (Bahamas).
