Howlers on both sides in aftermath of face-off
A moot has sparked a bizarre row between the elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
After Cambridge won Herbert Smith Freehills‘ Disability Mooting Championship last year, Oxford mistakenly claimed victory, posting in error on its website that “[i]n a very close decision, Oxford were awarded the win”.
Certainly that’s not the kind of attention to detail that would get you a TC at HSF.
Despite having no evidence that the post was anything more than an honest mistake, students at Cambridge decided to impute sinister motives after noticing it had been live for over a year. So earlier this month, as excitement built around this year’s edition of the mooting competition, they embarked on a bizarre social media campaign that seemed to make out their rivals had told a deliberate “lie”.
A flurry of TikTok’s that made this allegation in a supposedly “light-hearted” way have since been made private while a tweet doing the same has been deleted.
As an insider at Cambridge told us: “Nothing gets Cambridge students quite revved up as a little drama within this age-old rivalry!”
Again, not the sort of thing that would clinch you a place at a leading global law firm.
The HSF moot competition is set up by Oxford’s Law Faculty and has been running since 2014. Last year’s moot centred on whether a prosthetic limb can be regarded as an imitation firearm, and whether damage to a mobility aid cannot amount to actual bodily harm.