The Bilkent University Faculty of Law Jessup Team – Pelin Alan, Zeynep Balkan, Doğa Can, and İlayda Soysal – made history as the first Bilkent team participated in the international rounds of the Philip C. Jessup Moot Court Competition in Washington, D.C. Coached by Asst. Prof. A. Dicle Ergin and Grease Researcher Yeşim Köseoğlu, the team earned a highly selective Exhibition Team spot (one of only eight globally emerging teams) after finishing as national runners-up in Istanbul.
Jessup is the world’s largest moot court competition, as among 850 teams competing in national rounds globally, 170 teams from more than 90 jurisdictions represented their countries in the international rounds. The Bilkent Team won three out of four exhibition matches and actively assisted the International Law Students Association (ILSA) in organizing the event. This milestone offered invaluable global exposure, allowing the students to engage with distinguished international practitioners and UN International Law Commission members, and to observe a final round presided over by world-renowned legal scholars including Dapo Akande, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford and a member of the UN International Law Commission; Soledad García Muñoz, Distinguished Fellow at the Human Rights Institute of Georgetown Law, and the first Special Rapporteur on ESCER at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; and James Anaya, Distinguished Professor and former Dean at the University of Colorado Law School and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
