Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Brent Campagnola is now a member of an exclusive club of sorts.
As part of Dalhousie University’s international law moot competition team, capturing the Canadian title in Winnipeg, Man., he and his teammates spent 10 days in Washington D.C. in April competing with 138 teams from 97 countries at what is often referred to as the ‘Olympics of Law.’
The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Competition team is “almost like a cult,” Campagnola tells The Local on a recent visit back home in NOTL for his sister’s wedding. In Washington, he says, “there were so many people who said they go every year. They come back to judge or to coach teams. We had judges from Afghanistan and Germany, and some who said they’d been coming for 15 years. It’s part of their personality.”
Recognized in law circles around the world, competition in the Jessup Moot, says Campagnola, can open doors for an aspiring legal professional. In fact, many competitors were offered positions at firms while in Washington last month.
After earning a pre-law degree at Carleton University in Ottawa, Campagnola applied for law school and wasn’t accepted. So he returned to Carleton, where he finished a Master’s degree in applied linguistics. That led him to a job teaching English in Korea for two years.
When he returned to Canada, he volunteered as a caseworker at Kitchener’s Compass Refugee Centre, helping newcomers to Canada. On his third application to law school, he was accepted and began his studies at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law in 2020.
Now in his third and final year at Dalhousie, Campagnola didn’t know much about the Jessup Moot when he applied to be a part of the Halifax, N.S. university’s team.
“I took a couple of international law classes in my second year and I really enjoyed them,” he said. “And they were my highest grades. The professor (Rob Currie) for my evidence class is the coach for the team. It ended up making perfect sense to apply.”
Campagnola was one of four students to make the cut last fall. Soon, he found himself in regular sessions with Currie and volunteer deputy coach Sarah MacLeod, an associate at Halifax law firm Burchell Wickwire Bryson and a 2020 Dalhousie Jessup alum herself.
The first task for the team was to familiarize themselves with the case as set out by the International Law Students Association, the organization that administers the competition. The 2023 problem was called The Case Concerning the Clarent Belt (Aglovale v Ragnell), a fictional proceeding dealing with the interpretation of a peace treaty, deadly attacks in an allegedly occupied territory, unilateral economic sanctions and the legal consequences of failing to properly dispose of hazardous waste.
If that sounds complicated, consider the seemingly endless packages of materials the team had to dig into in preparing their written submission, called a memorial, and to later defend their positions at the moot, or mock trial.
That included the Charter of the United Nations, the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the 1966 International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and various other international conventions, scholarly documents and relevant past international cases.
“It was a really complex case,” says the 29-year-old. “Just with the first issue of four, you have two military objectives being neutralized, and there’s the issue of bringing the military into another country’s demilitarized zone, and the lawfulness of that given that the country bringing the military in is leasing the territory. They try to pack so much into every issue.”
The four team members divided up the tasks and responsibilities, two taking on the role of applicants. The other two, including Campagnola, would act as respondents. They spent the first four months of the school year preparing their written submission and then practising for the oral competition in Winnipeg.
“I represented the country that brought in its military, sort of the bad guys in the case,” he says.
In practice, the two sides would square off against each other in front of volunteer judges from Schulich and the Halifax legal community. Campagnola estimates they ran through the case this way 18 times, for at least three hours each session.
“It was important to stay fresh,” Campagnola explains. “Different judges will ask different questions. It’s all about how you handle the questions, how confident you are, and how well you can think on your feet.”
At the nationals, Dalhousie was one of 17 teams from law schools across Canada to face judges in the mock courtroom. The applicants and the respondents competed three times each in the round robin, with four teams moving on to the final round.
“For the final round, we went against the University of Toronto,” says Campagnola. “Toronto won the coin toss, and chose to take on our applicants. That was the side we wanted. Our applicants were definitely stronger.”
Dalhousie came out on top, the first time for the university to win the national competition since 2002. Not only did they place first in the oral competition but they also had the top written submission in the country. Along with Western and the University of British Columbia, they were off to Washington.
As the first place team representing their country, Campagnola and his teammates, fellow third-year students Nicole Arski, Julia Hiltz and Taline Selman, had the honour of carrying the flag into the opening ceremony.
“It was really cool to do that,” he remembers. “And when Ukraine got called, and walked up with their flag, the place erupted. That was a really cool moment.”
When it came time to go to trial, the Dalhousie team worked cohesively, beating teams from China, Saudi Arabia and Lithuania before losing a hard-fought match against the Honorable Society of Gray's Inn, a post-grad law organization from the U.K. But their 3-1 record in the preliminary round qualified them to move into the final 48, the only Canadian team to do so.
“Our applicants then went up against George Washington University, a pretty prestigious school,” Campagnola says. “We really felt we had beaten them, but the judges came out and found for the respondents. We didn’t win, but we were pretty happy nonetheless.”
The Dalhousie team did return from Capitol Hill with a sixth place prize for their joint written memorial and a ninth place prize for their team memorial. Campagnola’s teammate Arski was chosen as 25th best overall oralist out of more than 550 participants at the Jessup.
For Campagnola, it’s an experience he will never forget. It opened his eyes to a number of different possibilities he had never considered for his future in law. Meeting a lieutenant colonel from the Canadian Armed Forces in Winnipeg and Canada’s deputy ambassador to the U.S. in Washington has left him open to the idea of pursuing international law.
“I was impressed with how enthusiastic the JAG (Judge Advocate General) officers were about what they do,” admits Campagnola. “I’m thinking I might one day take the diplomat test, so I could serve as an agent for Canada in other countries.”
For now, though, as he writes his last final exams and gets ready for graduation in June, he will continue as an articled clerk at Burchell Wickwire Bryson, where he works with his coach MacLeod.
“I do a lot of civil litigation, human rights and employment,” he says of his current role there. “I try to get on some Aboriginal law cases, too. I get to work with a lot of different lawyers on different kinds of cases. It’s a really enriching experience.”
Don’t expect him to be representing clients back here in Niagara any time soon.
“I had a feeling pretty early on that I would stay out here,” Campagnloa laughs. “It was like a culture shock. Everyone out here is so friendly. And I love living by the sea, and I love the seafood.”