Graduate Institute students Wolfgang Alschner, Christine Barthelemy, Gregory Hudson, and Cam Vidler won high honours in the final oral round of the European Law Students' Association (ELSA) moot court competition on World Trade Organisation (WTO) law held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 24 to 29 May 2010. The team coached by Babette Ancery, Bassant El Attar, and Miguel Burneir da Silveira, also Graduate Institute students, won the Letizia Raschella-Segi award for best overall written submissions. The written submissions, counting for one third of their final score at the world oral round, helped the team take 5th place overall in the competition, making them the highest ranked European team in the world final.

The competition had students prepare oral arguments for two sides of a fictional WTO case involving a dispute over trade in medicines between a developed and a developing country. The team had submitted written arguments for both sides of the dispute prior to the competition and then defended those arguments orally before a series of mock WTO panels. After taking first place and winning the best overall written submissions in the European regional oral round held in Helsinki last March, the students progressed to the world final, where their written submissions swept the competition once again.

The ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law was created in the year 2000. This year is the third time a Graduate Institute team has participated and the third time they have progressed to the world final oral round. The competition seeks to advance academic understanding of the WTO and its agreements, contribute to discussions on globalisation, and assist in the development of countries’ technical legal capacity through the training of new trade lawyers and negotiators.

The team received support from and is associated with the Institute’s Law Unit and the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration. The Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration brings together the research activities of eminent professors of economics, law and political science in the area of trade, economic integration and globalisation. The Centre provides a forum for dialogue as well as organises events, publishes working papers and hosts visiting scholars.

Information on the ELSA Moot Court Competition is available on the association’s website.

More information on the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration (CTEI) is available on the Centre’s website.