2010-11 WTO Moot Court
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 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 2011 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 2011 competition is on cloned sheep and derivative products, an area that has not yet been covered directly in either WTO negotiations or dispute settlement, which explores the conflict of public health and moral issues with free trade as well as their harmonization derived from cloning technology. The Case concerns a dispute between two WTO Members relating to alleged violations of certain provisions of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) and the possible justification under Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT). The Case required teams to demonstrate their understanding of basic disciplines of the SPS Agreement, such as the requirement of sufficient scientific basis for national SPS measures, the requirement of proper risk assessment, the concept of a least-trade-restrictive alternative, the regime for measures adopted in case of insufficient scientific evidence, as well as traditional trade principles of non-discrimination and disguised restriction of trade as they are embodied in the SPS Agreement.
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. The team captain, Pin-Hsien Lee, was also awarded the outstanding of the preliminary round in Asian-Pacific Regional Round.
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 2011 NTU Team, 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. This not only symbolizes the NTU Law School tremendous capacity as shown on the stage of the world, but also symbolizes a successful inheritance between the team of each year.
