The College of Law’s NTU Moot Court Team placed runner-up at the 9th European Law Students' Association Moot Court Competition (EMC2) on WTO Law, which took place at the World Trade Organization’s headquarters in Geneva May 23-28. In hot competition with the best teams from regional competitions around the world, the NTU team rose through the ranks to enter the Final Oral Round, where it was bested by the outstanding two-time winning team of the law school of the University of Melbourne. This was the second time since 2008 that the NTU Moot Court Team placed second in this world competition.

During the competition, opposing teams represented the complainant and respondent parties, respectively, in simulated hearings on disputes subject to WTO arbitration. The students argued their cases orally in English before a panel of judges comprised of senior international law scholars and members of the WTO Appellate Body. The topic of this year’s competition, cloned sheep, challenged the teams to explore the public health and moral implications of cloning technology in terms of free trade.

The NTU team included two second year graduate students, Pin-hsien Lee and Yu-hsin Yeh, and one university senior, Chih-wei Hsu. They were trained by student coach Hsien Wu, a third year graduate student, and instructed by Yueh-ping Yang, a graduate of the NTU Graduate Institute of Law. Lee, the team captain, was named best orator of the competition’s semi-final round. The elite schools taking part in the competition included the London School of Economics and Political Science, King’s College London and the University of Hong Kong.

The NTU College of Law has played an active role in EMC2 since 2005. It hosted the competition’s Asia-Pacific Regional Round at NTU last March.