By Mirembe Linda | Law student at Cavendish University and Recipient of the Best Oralist Award at the 2025 CEHURD Moot Court Competition. For this achievement, she has undertaken a 3-month internship at CEHURD.
There are moments in law school that shape you.
Then there are moments that remake you. The CEHURD Moot was the latter.
When I stood to deliver my first submission, my heart pounded not because of the judges before me, though they were the finest legal minds I have ever faced, a bench so formidable it felt like arguing before the architects of the law itself β but because of her.
The girl whose story we were dissecting. The woman whose suffering had been reduced to a case file, a bundle of exhibits, a statistic for evidentiary purposes.
That is the haunting truth of the CEHURD Moot. You are not merely arguing a hypothetical. You are speaking for the young girls and women whose lived realities, their bodies, their pain, their survival , are routinely flattened into evidence for the convenience of courts. Their turmoil becomes our moot problem. Their trauma becomes our submissions. And for those few days, you carry the weight of that truth on your shoulders.
I argued against the best of the best. And I argued before a bench so distinguished that every word felt like it was being weighed against the entire arc of justice. The experience was so exceptional, that even now, when the memory replays, I still get goosebumps. But then I remember, we won. My institution took the trophy. And I walked away with the Best Oralist award.
A smile finds its way back.
To This Year’s Oralists, understand what you have been handed. You are not just representing your university. You are standing in the gap for every girl whose story never made it to a courtroom with dignity. You are the voice that insists her life is not just a data point.
Be proud. Very few students get to argue at this level before judges whose reputations precede them, on issues that matter beyond the moot hall. You are the exceptional few.
Let the bench feel that you understand what is at stake beyond the trophy.
Go and be unforgettable.
