by Valeria Martinez, J.D., Immigrant Justice Clinic, Law School, UW-Madison
How should the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) interpret the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) given our increasingly digital world? Does a country violate human rights when it bans anonymity on online social platforms or is mandated transparency justified for reasons of public safety? Do we have a human right to remove online information about us? Is it legitimate for a multinational corporation to sue an indigenous journalist and environment defender for slander in the face of freedoms of speech? Can governments protect rights to privacy while surveilling its population?
Last May, Vera Leone (LACIS MA/JD), Paula Monteiro Danese, and I joined dozens of law students, lawyers, and judges from all over Latin America and the world to sift and winnow through these questions, practice fundamental lawyering skills, and defend our positions at the 2024 Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition (IAMoot) in Washington D.C.
Preparation began in January. For four months Vera and I immersed ourselves in international human rights. First, with the guidance of our coach, Paula, we studied the foundational instruments that established the Inter-American System of Human Rights and other international bodies until we could recite statutes from memory. We contemplated the importance of doctrines like Conventionality Control which upholds the superiority of the ACHR. We read works from highly qualified philosophers, scholars, and rapporteurs, like Robert Alexy, Ludovic Hennebel, and Catalina Botero Marino. We compared jurisprudence from the various Latin-American states and marveled at foreign approaches to the law.
Then, we were tasked with arguing that the fictitious state of Varaná, had complied with the ACHR’s demands despite a cocktail of alleged violations involving privacy, access to information, journalistic rights, and censorship that the equally fictitious Plaintiff brought forth. We drafted a 42-page memorial explaining why the IACtHR should rule in our favor and after final exams at UW, we practiced our oral arguments before our professors.
Finally, the week-long, tri-lingual competition took place at the American University Washington College of Law. We went head-to-head with law students from Mexico and Brazil to argue our case before reputable international human rights attorneys volunteering as judges. Vera and I won 1st place English Memorial Defending the State and, respectively, 1st and 2nd place English Orators Defending the State.
I first hoped to take part in this opportunity after hearing about it in first year of law school. I craved experience and knowledge in international human rights law beyond my curriculum. Two years later, my team secured a spot in the competition with funding from the Latin American Caribbean and Iberian Studies (LACIS) department and the Law School.
As I write this, I remain in awe of the experience. I am proud of my team’s dedication and commitment. The moot court was just as much a hub for making international friends and networking with top professionals as much as it was a competition. I was able to visit the Organization for American States and Center for Justice and International Law and meet trailblazers like Soledad García Muñoz and Claudia Martín.
I never thought of myself as a human rights lawyer before IAMoot, but now I know I am one. For the next two years, I will be focusing on domestic human rights and helping immigrants and asylum seekers defend their status in the United States. In the future, I will be looking out for opportunities in the international sphere, and I believe I will be more qualified to do so with IAMoot on my resume.
I feel a sense of profound gratitude to everyone that made this experience possible, especially to LACIS for their generous support without which this experience wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you.
A special note from Valeria: “At the competition, we really got the sense that we put UW on the map. US/American schools rarely participate in this competition and several competitors were surprised to see us there and didn’t know that Wisconsin even existed. The last day, the lead organizer of the event came up to us specifically to thank us for participating, noting the significance of our participation given our context. While the United States is party to the OAS, it hasn’t acceded to the IACtHR, and the American Convention is not as large a part of the curriculum as it is in Latin America. I took his “see you next year” as a responsibility to ensure that UW students continue to participate and that we spread the word about the importance of this human rights body in the United States. “