The Moot-court Team of NTU Law School Got the Runner-Up in Grand Final of ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law

In the 9th ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law (EMC2) as held in Evian and World Trade Organization headquarter in Geneva during May 23 to 28, 2011, the NTU Moot-court Team, with outstanding performance, got the runner-up in Grand Final, which is superior to many prestigious law schools, such as London School of Economics and Political Science, King’s College London, and Hong Kong University.　The winner of this year is Melbourne University.

This is the second time the NTU team won the second place in this annual competition. Last time the NTU team won the second place was in 2008. The WTO Director General Pascal Lamy and the Deputy Director Generl Alejandro Jara were both there and they were very happy that a non-native English speaking country team were in the Grand Final and were impressed that two of the Asia-Pacific Regional Round (APRR) teams were in the Grand Final. APRR was hosted by the NTU in March this year.

The EMC2 is held by European Law School Association, in which the experts and scholars of international economic and trade laws design the case fact, while students play the role of both Members’ council to analyze and debate on the relevant issues based on WTO laws. World renowned scholars, WTO practitioners and the members of the WTO Appellate Body assume the judges of the panel, put forward questions to both parties, and score the performance. The competition is conducted in English throughout the proceedings. Since 2006, the Asian Center for WTO & International Health Law and Policy of the NTU Law School (“ACWH”) is in charge of holding the Asian Regional Round of EMC2 in a consecutive 5 years, and it used to hold the Grand Final of EMC2 in 2009. This year, the Asian Regional Round is held jointly with Oceania Regional Round, in which in a total of 15 teams, including teams from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Philippine, and China, etc. as well as 2 teams from Taiwan, participated in the round.

The topic of the competition this year is on cloned sheep, which explores the conflict of public health and moral issues with free trade as well as their harmonization derived from cloning technology. The team members of the NTU team in Grand Final are comprised of Pin-Hsien Lee and Yu-Hsin Yeh, both the second year students of NTU Law Master Program, Division of Economic Laws, and Chih-Wei Hsu, a fourth year NTU Bachelor Program, Division of Legal Science, as well as the student coach Hsien Wu, a third year student of NTU Law Master Program, Division of International Law, with the instruction from Yueh-Ping Yang, a graduate of NTU Law Master Program, Division of Civil and Commercial Law. The NTU Team, by commencing the preparation since September, 2010, studying large number of relevant WTO dispute settlement cases and literatures in these 9 months, and overcoming the disadvantages in language by outstanding persistency and practices, was promoted to the Grand Final as the third place of Asian-Pacific Regional Round held in March 1 to 6, 2011. In the Grand Final, the NTU Team was successfully promoted to the quarter final as the 2nd place among all the participating teams in preliminary round, further promoted to the semi-final after the competition with London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom, and finally promoted to the final round to compete with Melbourne University, Australia, the two-time winner, by defeating the Queen’s University, Canada, in the semi-final. In the end, the NTU Team got the runner-up by a close difference. The team captain, Pin-Hsien Lee, was also awarded the best orator of the semi-final round.

NTU Law School participated in this competition since 2005, and its performance is extraordinary. It got the 5th place in Grand Final and winner in East-Asian Round in 2006, and further got the runner-up in Grand Final and runner-up in Asian Round in 2008. In 2009 it also won the Asian Round. Hsien Wu, the student coach this year, was the team member in 2009 and won the best orator of the preliminary round of Asian Round. The co-coach Yueh-Ping Yang was also the team member in 2006 as well as the student coach in 2008 and 2009. The NTU Team this year, with the terrific cooperation between the team members and previous participants, has another excellent performance, which is consistently appraised by the experts and scholars serving as the judges. The performance of the team has clearly shown the remarkable academic capacity of our students and the spirit of cooperation and sharing experiences among team members and between teams of different years.