Brooklyn Law and Fordham Law Face Off in Moot Court for Cape Town Convention Academic Project
(L to R) Moot Court Honor Society students from Brooklyn Law School took on a team from Fordham Law. The participating students were: (L to R) Brooklyn Law’s Jonathan Lent ’26, Fordham Law’s Mariana Torres Salazar and Dasha Babaytseva (all seated) and Brooklyn Law’s Hadi Akbik ’26 (standing). The presiding judges were (L to R) U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Elizabeth Stong of the Eastern District of New York and U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Shelly Chapman of the Southern District of New York (retired).
A special mooting event held Wednesday night pitted Moot Court Honor Society students from Brooklyn Law School against a team from Fordham Law School, with students arguing before sitting judges as they addressed a cross-border insolvency legal problem under the Cape Town Convention and its Aircraft Protocol.
Brooklyn Law School hosted the event, which was held in the Moot Court Room, with U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Shelly Chapman of the Southern District of New York (retired) and U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Elizabeth Stong of the Eastern District of New York presiding. For Brooklyn Law School, the students serving as advocates were Jonathan Lent ’26 and Hadi Akbik ’26. They were coached by Angela Chang ’25 and Jacqueline Kindler ’25. For Fordham, the advocates were Dasha Babaytseva and Mariana Torres Salazar. Their coach was Matthew Salavitch. The judges were not asked to choose a winner, but each complimented the analysis, advocacy, poise and preparation of both sides, with Chapman summing up her comments, applicable to both sides with one word: “Wow!!”
“We are pleased that Brooklyn and Fordham were chosen as the location for this first U.S. moot court sponsored by the Cape Town Convention Academic Project,” President and Joseph Crea Dean David D. Meyer said in opening remarks. “It is a chance to expose our students to the difficult and important work of harmonizing international commercial law.”
Meyer added that this work is an area in which professors at Brooklyn Law and Fordham Law have long played a role, specifically calling out 1901 Distinguished Research Professor of Law Neil Cohen, and David M. Barse Professor of Law Edward Janger from Brooklyn Law School and Professor Susan Block-Lieb at Fordham as having participated in both U.S. and NGO delegations to UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) and UNIDROIT (International Institute for the Unification of Private Law) working groups.
Janger served as the faculty lead at the event, which was held under the auspices of the Cape Town Convention Academic Project (CTCAP), which is a joint undertaking between UNIDROIT and the University of Cambridge, with the Aviation Working Group (AWG) as a founding sponsor. Previous CTCAP mooting events have been held in the United Kingdom between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, in Singapore at the National University Singapore and at McGill University in Montreal.
The Cape Town Convention (CTC), ratified by the United States in 2003, is a global treaty that guarantees the rights of lessors to repossess high-value leased equipment such as aircraft, engines, and helicopters in case of payment defaults. It is designed to reduce a creditor’s risk and enhance the legal predictability in these equipment transactions, including in the case of a debtor’s insolvency or other default. The moot case involved a dispute between a lessor, represented by the Fordham Law students, and a Chapter 11 debtor, represented by the Brooklyn Law School students. The dispute focused on the application of the Cape Town Convention Aircraft Protocol and the calculation of administrative claims for a foreign airline filing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
On behalf of the Law School, Meyer thanked the event’s sponsors including Jeffrey Wool, Secretary General of AWG, as well as UNIDROIT, and its Secretary General Ignacio Tirado and the law firm coaches and problem developers, including David Rosenzweig and Emily Hong from Norton Rose Fulbright; Marc Latman of Smith Gambrell Russell; Andrew Alfano, Dania Slim, and Michael Burke ’02 of Pillsbury; Celinda Metro and Alison Weil of Watson Farley & Williams; and John Pritchard, Barbra Parlin, and Noah Parson of Holland & Knight.
To see all the photos from the event, click here.