The first part of the course focuses on the competition itself. Students are encouraged to read the webpage of the competition thoroughly, to understand the rules of the game and to get acquainted with the key information crucial for their future participation. This part is self-standing and can be completed at any time during the course.
The second part of the course equips students with the practical skill of searching for case law, identifying relevant cases, finding them in full-text version and reading them. There are two key skills: doing the research & understanding the content.
The third part of the course stretches beyond the database of the ECtHR's case law and leads students to explore also other sources such as academic writings. The key skill lies in the research itself: finding the relevant data and not getting lost in unrelated information.
The fourth part of the course invites students to watch an existing litigation before the ECtHR, to digest the key arguments and to try to plead the same case themselves.
The fifth and last part of the course brings all the previous parts together: students should draft their own submissions in the selected case while respecting the formatting rules of the competition. Teamwork is a cruicial element of this last part: the written submissions are prepared in pairs.