About the FDI Moot
The Foreign Direct Investment Moot Competition is a student competition annually organized by the Center for International Legal Studies (Salzburg, Austria), Suffolk University Law School (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), Pepperdine University Law School (Malibu, California, USA), Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law of the University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland, UK), and the German Institution for Arbitration (Frankfurt/Cologne, Germany). It has also been endorsed by several respected institutions such as the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, the International Chamber of Commerce, as well as the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. The increase of international investment, proliferation of investment treaties, national investment promotion legislation and “internationalized” investment contracts have encouraged the rapid development of a new field of international law, which addresses the host States’ obligations towards foreign investors and regulates procedures to resolve related investment disputes. This is why the objective of the FDI Moot Competition is “to promote among a new generation of lawyers a practice-oriented understanding of international investment law and arbitration as an effective mechanism for the settlement of international investment disputes.”
The competition is based on a hypothetical dispute arising out of an investment by a private investor in a foreign host state. The dispute itself involves a set of theoretical and practical procedural and substantive issues both in the sphere of arbitration adjudication and foreign investments. The competition consists of two stages. First, the students prepare and submit written Memoranda for each of Claimant and Respondent. This is followed by the preparation for the second stage, which consists in presentation of oral arguments at the oral hearings. The students prepare for both stages of the competition for a period of about 6 months. Both the Memoranda and the oral hearings are reviewed and graded by established practitioners and academics in the fields of international arbitration, investment regulation, construction law and international economic law.
The first FDI Moot Competition was held at the University of Suffolk in Boston, Massachusetts on November 1 and 2, 2008. This moot has attracted teams from Australia, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Poland, Romania, Russia and the United States. The Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade was also among the participants of the first FDI Moot Competition and achieved outstanding results. The team won third place in the oral rounds of the competition, two of its students were awarded an honorable mention for the best speakers. They also received high marks for their memoranda and were therefore ranked 2nd in the overall ranking of the participating teams.
More information and the documents relevant for previous competitions can be found on the official site of the FDI Moot: www.fdimoot.org
