Rus­sell Warn­er, a sec­ond-year stu­dent and mem­ber of the Hugh Wood­ing Law School team, has de­feat­ed his in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts to take first prize for Best De­fence Coun­sel at the re­cent In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court Moot­ing com­pe­ti­tion at The Hague, Nether­lands. Warn­er was a mem­ber of a team which in­clud­ed Jo­hanan Lafeuillee-Dough­lin (Grena­da), Kevin Web­ster (Bar­ba­dos), Mansergh Grif­fith (Trinidad and To­ba­go) and coach Roger Ram­goolam (T&T- course di­rec­tor, Hugh Wood­ing Law School).

Warn­er's ac­com­plish­ment came in Hugh Wood­ing's first en­try in the com­pe­ti­tion. The teams pre­sent­ed ar­gu­ments based on a hy­po­thet­i­cal sit­u­a­tions 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, New York, last Feb­ru­ary. 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 topped en­trants from the USA, Os­goode Hall Law School of 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 in the Ba­hamas.