First ever WU team excels at international moot court competition

Together with Stefan Dobrijevic (Associate at KNOETZL), LawGov’s Stefan Mayr coached the first ever WU team to participate in one of the most renowned international moot court competitions: the Frankfurt Investment Arbitration Moot Court (FIAMC).

We are very proud that after an excellent third rank in the pre-moot competition in Rome, our incredibly dedicated team – Anastasiya Ivashko, Mareike Lanmüller, Michael Miladinovic and Frederic Zaazou – sensationally reached the final eight at the main event in Frankfurt, where the best 32 teams worldwide competed, and finished fifth overall in terms of points.

True to the FIAMC’s tradition, the team was confronted with a highly complex legal dispute rooted in a real historical event (this year: the Black Tom explosion during the First World War). The legal issues put before the students were as rich as they were demanding. Some pertained to classics in investment arbitration such as questions of jurisdiction ratione personae, the admissibility and materiality of evidence or the challenge of an arbitrator due to alleged issue bias. Others touched on currently hotly debated topics, such as abuse of process and the effect of prior arbitral awards (res iudicata, issue estoppel). On top of all that the team had to delve into a detailed calculation exercise to determine the damage and work out how previous payments were to be allocated and under which rules.

Big thanks for their support of our endeavour goes to KNOETZL and to WU’s Institute for European and International Law.