First place and every other prize awarded to the NKUA’s School of Law at the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition

For the first time in a moot court competition, a single team wins all the prizes!

We are pleased to announce that, following a series of excellent performances, the team from the NKUA’s School of Law, which represented Greece at the European Rounds of the 2024 Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition held in Vienna, Austria, from 8-12 April 2024, finished 1^st in Europe. At the same time, the team received all of the competition’s other prizes, i.e., the prize for the best written memorials and the prize for the best oralist, which went to Chrysa Vorloou!  

That is the first time a team has won every prize in a moot court competition!

It is important to note that the NKUA’s School of Law defeated the University of Cologne in the Semi-Final and the University of Leiden in the Final. As champion, the NKUA’s School of Law will represent Europe at the World Finals, that will take place in Milan, Italy, in October 2024.

The Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition is organized annually by the International Institute of Space Law and, at the European level, by the European Centre for Space Law (ECSL). The 2024 case concerned legal issues related to the protection of dark and quiet skies, the freedom of scientific investigation in outer space, and the collision of space objects. The case is available at the link below: https://iisl.space/index.php/manfredlachs2024/

This year’s outstanding success by the NKUA’s School of Law marks the climax of a glorious long history of involvement in the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition, with results at both the European and worldwide levels. Since its first participation in 2011, the NKUA’s School of Law has continuously placed first in Europe, having achieved the following in its 12 participations to date:

• 11 participations at the Semi-Finals of the European Rounds,
• 7 participations at the Finals of the European Rounds,
• 5 European championships, three of those consecutive (2015, 2016, and 2017),
• 2 second places (2011 and 2022), and
• 4 third places (2013, 2019, 2020, and 2021).

At the same time, the NKUA’s School of Law holds another record since, in the period 2011-2024, it has:

• participated four times in the World Final Round,
• won one World Championship, and
• finished twice in the second place worldwide.

Remarkably, no other University has achieved a comparable total performance between 2011 and 2024, at either the European or global level.

This year’s winning team comprised the undergraduate students Chrysa Vorloou, Evangelos Gazis, and Rengina Kourtidi, and was under the supervision and guidance of Associate Professor at the NKUA’s School of Law, G Kyriakopoulos, with crucial aid from trainee lawyer, Giorgos Chatzicharalampous, and undergraduate student, Vera Palialexi,who were both members of the NKUA’s School of Law team in 2022.

It is worth mentioning that the judges gave the Greek students great feedback on their performance, praising, in particular, the breadth and strength of their pleas-in-law and their in-depth knowledge of the international and space law. It is also fascinating that, even though the members of the Greek team are still in their early academic years (Mses Vorloou and Kourtidi are second-year students, while Mr Gazis is a third-year student), they challenged and defeated teams with postgraduate students in their ranks!

This unrivalled distinction of the NKUA’s School of Law, which has maintained a consistent presence at the highest level of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition (an arduous academic process, requiring exhaustive and thorough study of the public international and space law), proves once again the excellent potential of Greek students (all of the above results have been achieved by different, each year, teams of students), their passion for research and learning, as well as the particularly high comparative position they hold among their peers worldwide. It also demonstrates the depth and high-quality education offered by the NKUA’s School of Law to its students.