ICJ

Hello all

As we approach the conference next month I have been getting several questions as to how committee will proceed.  Here is a basic overview of how it will go.

Since the ICJ is a court we will be running committee like a trial.  We will start off with opening statements from the prosecution and defense attorneys.  Following this we will have you as justices give short speeches (if you want, it isn’t mandatory by any means) and explain what you think each side needs to present in order to convince you to vote in their favor during deliberations which will take place on Sunday morning. 

After opening statements and your speeches, we will proceed with witnesses.  The prosecution will have the floor first and thus present their case through their witnesses. Each witness will be questioned by both counsels and then each of you will have the opportunity to raise certain questions to the witness. Keep in mind that the questions you ask have to be answerable by that witness, such that they would have knowledge to answer your question.  In other words a villager can explain what they saw during an attack but they probably could not tell you all the details about the army’s strategy.  Once the prosecution has called forth their last witness to the stand, the defense will have their opportunity to present their witnesses.  In between witnesses you can call caucuses (moderated or informal) to go over what each witness has said and whether they have helped one side  more so than the other.  In fact, I encourage you to do this between each witness, if you would like, in order to summarize and reflect on them so that you will remember them clearly during deliberations.

Once all witnesses have been called forth, each counsel will give their closing arguments.  After this you will be entering deliberations (known as voting in other committees) Instead of writing resolutions however, you will be writing your arguments as to which side you favor and presenting these arguments to your fellow justices in an attempt to persuade them to your view.  Basically, each of you will be giving your own closing arguments.  Then you will vote and decide the case.

So basically that is the extent of how committee will be run.  Also committee will be run as if we were in the same time period as when the ICJ originally heard this case.  It will not be 2008.  If you have comments, questions, or suggestions feel free to let me know.  Also, if you have any witnesses that you would like to have called during the conference let me know by March 1, 2008 so we can do our best to accomodate such requests. 

Looking forward to an exciting weekend with all of you next month.

 Taumoha

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.