5th Edinburgh International Willem Vis Pre-Moot 2015/16

The 5th Edinburgh International Willem Vis Pre-Moot took place on Saturday 20th – Sunday 21st February 2016. The event was a great success seeing students from Universities from France, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Slovakia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Japan, England and Scotland participate, practice and compete with each other.

The Edinburgh University Willem Vis International Commercial Arbitration Pre-moot is a mooting competition that combines procedural issues of international commercial arbitration (this year based on the Vienna Rules) with substantive law on international sale of goods based on the CISG (The Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods of 1980). It allows a number of international student teams from several different countries and legal & arbitration practitioners and judges to come together for student training and mutual inspiration. Moot teams will plead their cases for claimant and respondent and moot arbitrators will provide constructive oral and written feedback to the teams.

The Pre-Moot was based on the problem for the 23rd Willem Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, with final rounds in Vienna in March 2016. The full problem/case file is available on the Moot website (https://vismoot.pace.edu/).

After the opening by the Rt. Hon. Lord Hamilton, past Lord Justice General of Scotland and Lord President of the Court of Session, and a briefing for the arbitrators by Mr Hew R Dundas, student pleadings ran through all of Saturday and most of Sunday. All participants also had the opportunity to meet more informally at the reception at the Playfair Library, Old College.

The Edinburgh Pre-Moot is an important step for our students in their preparation for their pleadings at the moot venue in Vienna and we are very grateful for the strong support from the arbitration community and judiciary. It is the latter that gives the Edinburgh Pre-Moot its strength and attraction beyond the practice element in a truly international setting. This years event was welcomed as exciting and enriching for both sides.

We wish the very best of luck to all teams for their performances at the finals in Vienna or Hong Kong. At this stage, our congratulations go to the team members of the University of Berne who achieved the highest scores at this year’s Pre-Moot, followed closely by our Edinburgh team and Lucerne University.

Arbitrators:

Without the help and support of our legal and arbitration community it would not be possible to host such an event. With sincere thanks to our arbitrators (alphabetical order) for giving their time and advice to the students:

• Iain Aitchison (MDBF FCIArb, Munich)
• Ross G Anderson (Ampersand Advocates)
• Professor Guillermo Argerich (Argentine International Chamber of Commerce, Buenos Aires University)
• Murray Armes (Sense Studio Ltd)
• Snjólaug Árnadóttir (University of Edinburgh)
• David Bartos (Terra Firma Chambers)
• James Byrne (Lancester University)
• Çağrı Cem (Marmara University)
• Professor James Claxton (Kobe University)
• Dr Neil Dowers (City University London)
• Hew R Dundas (International Arbitrator and Mediator)
• Aylin Dzhafer (Metis Partners)
• Dr Filippo Fontanelli (University of Edinburgh)
• Shona Frame (CMS Cameron McKenna)
• Elena-Mihaela Gheorghe (University of Edinburgh)
• Kim Geurts (Radboud University Nijmegen)
• The Rt Hon Lord Hamilton
• Gregor Hayworth (University of Edinburgh)
• Merel Heilbron (Radboud University Nijmegen)
• Robert Howie QC (Ampersand Advocates)
• Michal Hrušovský (Comenius University)
• Lisa Imhof (University of Lucerne)
• Dr Andrey Kotelnikov (Robert Gordon University)
• Anke Krause (Linklaters, Frankfurt)
• Pavel Lacko (Comenius University)
• Dr Simone Lamont-Black (University of Edinburgh)
• Ross Macdonald (University of Edinburgh)
• Donny Mackinnon (Chartered Arbitrator)
• Konstantina Maniati (University of Edinburgh)
• Maria Blanca Noodt Taquela (University of Buenos Aires)
• Leonardo Valladares Pacheco de Oliveira (Anglia Ruskin University)
• Hasanali Pirbhai (University of Edinburgh)
• Professor Akira Saito (Kobe University)
• Michael Schifferli (University of Bern)
• Roxane Schmidgall (University of Lucerne)
• Ulrich G. Schroeter (University of Mannheim)
• Christopher Thordson (University of Edinburgh)
• Mihail Vatsov (University of Edinburgh)
• Fergus Whyte (University of Edinburgh)

We are also extremely grateful to our sponsors:

CMS Cameron McKenna, Hogan Lovells International LLP, the Scottish Arbitration Centre, Hill Hofstetter and Edinburgh Law School for their generous and continued support.