Foreign Direct Investment Moot

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CILS Benefactors Inc. provides travel grants to university 
teams from throughout the world to facilitate participation
in the annual Foreign Direct Investment Moot competition.

Murdoch University Wins 2008 Moot

The Murdoch University School of Law (Australia) congratulates its Foreign Direct Investments International Moot team, who have triumphed over Pepperdine University Law School in the final of the oral rounds of the competition, which took place at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts. The Murdoch team overcame tough competition from 20 other law schools across the globe - from as far afield as St Petersburg and Addis Abbaba - to win the 2008 Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP Cup.

The FDI Moot was inaugurated in 2006 by the Center for International Legal Studies. The competition involves a hypothetical scenario involving a private investor in a foreign host state. In today’s era of increasing bi- and multi-lateral investment treaties and burgeoning international investments, the FDI Moot is of particular relevance to Law students who seek to function effectively in the international corporate sphere. Our team, comprised of Nick Summers, Tamara Watson, Glen Williamson, Andrew Kirk and Kristian Maley, working under the directorship of Adjunct Professor Tony Brennan, have been hard at work since late March, researching the case and preparing memoranda. The team travelled to Boston in late October to compete in the oral rounds on November 1 and 2. 

Belgrade University Takes Third in Orals

The Foreign Direct Investment Moot Competition is a student competition annually organized by the Center for International Legal Studies (Salzburg, Austria), Suffolk University Law School (Boston, Massachusetts), Pepperdine University Law School (Malibu, California), the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law of the University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland), and the German Institution for Arbitration (Frankfurt/Cologne, Germany). It has been endorsed by institutions such as the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. The increase of international investment, proliferation of investment treaties, national investment promotion legislation and “internationalized” investment contracts have encouraged the rapid development of a new field of international law, which addresses the host States’ obligations towards foreign investors and regulates procedures to resolve related investment disputes. This is why the objective of the FDI Moot Competition is “to promote among a new generation of lawyers a practice-oriented understanding of international investment law and arbitration as an effective mechanism for the settlement of international investment disputes.”

The competition is based on a hypothetical dispute arising out of an investment by a private investor in a foreign host state. The dispute itself involves a set of theoretical and practical procedural and substantive issues both in the sphere of arbitration adjudication and foreign investments. The competition consists of two stages. First, the students prepare and submit written Memoranda for each of Claimant and Respondent. This is followed by the preparation for the second stage, which consists in presentation of oral arguments at the oral hearings. The students prepare for both stages of the competition for a period of about 6 months. Both the Memoranda and the oral hearings are reviewed and graded by established practitioners and academics in the fields of international arbitration, investment regulation, construction law and international economic law.    

The first FDI Moot Competition was held at the Suffolk University in Boston, on November 1 and 2, 2008. The moot attracted teams from Australia, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the United States. The Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade was among the participants and achieved outstanding results. The team won third place in the oral rounds of the competition, two of its students were awarded an honorable mention for the best speakers.  They also received high marks for their memoranda and were therefore ranked second in the overall ranking of the participating teams.