“The Applicant party can now take the floor.”
There we were, in the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
It seemed pretty unreal. “This is physically the place where the jurisprudence we study is produced, but more still where our rights are enforced,” I had been repeating to my teammates for the last two days.
In that fraction of a second, it all flew back to my mind. The last 9 months of work, sacrifice, pressure, internal struggles, of hugs, tears, crises.
I had decided to apply for the European Law Moot Court team of Roma Tre when my Erasmus was coming to an end. Now that I had proven to myself that I could make it on my own abroad, I urged to challenge myself also academically. Surely, I wanted to engage in something practical, a good point on my CV, but I mainly did it to get out of my comfort zone again. I was looking for something mentally stimulating, and pretending to be a lawyer before the Court of Justice sure as hell was. Only, I would not have imagined for the world we could have arrived at the Court of Justice, the final step. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined passing not only the preliminary, written proof in November, but also the Regional Final in February. No one could have imagined it; it was Roma Tre’s first year. While I was expecting a huge challenge, what I was not expecting was for the
competition to bring out all my personal traumas also, my urge for me to be perfect coupled with the feeling I did not matter. I thought I had overcome them, I even thought my self-esteem had been strengthened by my Erasmus period. Having to take the floor to protect a fake client in a fake case proved me wrong. I had worked so hard to prove to myself I was worthy in all aspects of my life that I kind of thought I was done.
I was wrong.
I’ll admit, having to confront Aramis, The Mooter, the charming guy who is able to perfectly speak three languages and knows a little of basically all the others, whose rhetoric is flawless and judicial skills impressive, was both an occasion to grow, and an absolute self esteem crusher. Again, that feeling of not being good enough, that fear of deceiving others, my teammates, haunted me.
My team was the reason I was both afraid of losing and able to endure the struggle. I remember the day I saw Laura, our Advocate General, plead in Sofia, our Regional Final. It gave me goosebumps. We had started that adventure together, exploring the labyrinthine structure of Roma Tre’s offices to find that of the Professor. We had our first pleading together. The memory of Aramis turning toward me “She’s Eminem, does she even breathe?” flew back to my mind. And there she was, in Sofia, smiling to the judges with a calm and self-confidence that thrilled me, as if she had been my little sister. I remember my first pleading in Sofia. I was curious to see if I could really make it. I remember the whisper in my ears, “you know how to do it, now go kick assess”. It was Viviana, our coach. She was incredible, my personal source of inspiration, our “academic” mum. She was the other half of the reason why I had made it up to that point.
“The Applicant party can now take the floor.”
Natalia patted my leg. It was a “go kick ass” kind of touch. She was our legal counsel, the person who helps the oralists to answer strategically during the reply-phase. It takes a huge lucidity to decide how to reply while listening to your opponent, while, at the same time, not dying from the adrenaline shot that talking to the judges inevitably gives you. She is there to help you with her lucidity. And even physiologically, she was to me a constant reminder I was not alone. We were a team, and we would win like one.
“The Applicant party can now take the floor.”
It’s a fraction of a second, enough for me to hear “you know how to do it, now go kick asses”. Only, this time, it was my inner voice whispering. The most astonishing part of Moot competitions is that you are so fully, emotionally vested in it, that you forget it is a game, however valuable and recognised. You care. You care about the case, about your arguments, you even care about the infringement of fundamental rights of your dead, non-existent client. You care about your teammates, your coach, your teacher. They become your academic family, other mooters from other competitions like your cousins. And the last night, when the competition is over and it’s
high time to celebrate, you decide you can even fraternize with your mooters-opponents, irrespectively of who won.
I lost the final. I lost it and it hurt. I felt I had disappointed everybody, that maybe my inner demons were right after all, that I was not enough.
It was a short 5-minutes feeling.
Then I looked around. We were in Luxembourg, in the final of the final, transmitted online on the website of the Court of Justice. I had been able to answer calmly, with full control and full lucidity, to hundreds of questions from real judges of the Court. The case may have been fake, but my performance was real. My improvements, my achievements, my academic family. That was real, and that was my biggest win.
I lost the final. But I most certainly won.
