June 2017
A team of law students from the the Universidad Anáhuac Oaxaca (UAO) won the fourth annual Mexico Champion of Champions Mock Trial Competition against a team of law students from the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua on June 26, at the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.
The competition was the culmination of two nationwide mock trial tournaments in Mexico, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and conducted respectively by the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) and California Western School of Law. The team from UAO won the ABA ROLI-organized tournament, while the team from the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua won the tournament run by California Western School of Law. ABA ROLI conducted the nationwide tournament as part of its INL-sponsored New Advocates for Mexican Justice Program, which supports Mexican law schools as they adapt to Mexico’s new adversarial criminal justice system. In addition to hosting the UAO team in D.C. for the championship competition, ABA ROLI took the team and two representatives from Mexico’s National Institute for Criminal Science on study tours to the U.S. Supreme Court, D.C Superior Court, U.S District Court in Greenbelt, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, INL, and the American Bar Association so they could learn more about the U.S justice sector and its implementation of the accusatorial system.