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Announcing the winners of the 2014 Nappert Prize

Published: 26 August 2014

Professor Andrea Bjorkland, the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law, was delighted to receive more than 80 submissions from scholars and junior practitioners affiliated with more than 50 institutions for the 2014 Nappert Prize in International Arbitration. Authors hailed from around the world, with every continent save Antarctica represented. 

This contest is biennial. The next Nappert Prize contest will be held in 2016. More details will be available in late 2015.

After careful review, the jury has selected the following papers as the inaugural winners of this new prize:

  • First Prize (4,000$): Ridhi Kabra (LLM student, Cambridge), “Has Abaclat v. Argentina left the ICSID with a ‘Mass’ive Problem?”
  • Second Prize (2,000$): Mitchell Moranis  (JD student, Harvard), “Between Power and Procedure:  The Changing Balance of Investment Treaty Protections”
  • Third Prize (tie; 1,000$ each): Antoine Champagne (BCL/LLB student, McGill), “Moral Damages Left in Limbo” and Robert Kovacs (Associate, Linklaters; PhD Student, U. of Geneva), “International Arbitration and Insolvency:  A Question of Applicable Law”.

The winners will also be invited to come present their papers at a symposium hosted by McGill University in October 2014.   

The Fortier Chair is grateful to the jury for its careful and thorough consideration of the essays:

  • Mark D. Beckett, Partner, Chadbourne & Parke, New York.
  • George Bermann, Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, Columbia Law School, New York.
  • Teresa Cheng, Senior Counsel and Chartered Arbitrator, Des Voeux Chambers, Hong Kong.
  • Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Professor, University of Oslo.
  • José Feris, Deputy Secretary General, ICC International Court of Arbitration, Paris.
  • Meg Kinnear, Secretary-General, ICSID, Washington, DC.
  • Philippe Pinsolle, Partner, Quinn Emmanuel, Paris.

Honorable mentions:

  • Horia Ciurtin (Babes Bolyai University, Romania), “A Hermeneutical Perspective upon the 'Mitigation of Damages' Principle: The Metamorphosis of a Concept in International Law.”
  • Joel Dahlquist (Uppsala University, Sweden), “Beside the Point: On Obiter Dicta in Investment Treaty Arbitration.”
  • Elsa Paparemborde (BCL/LLB student, McGill), “Preventive Requests for the Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards: Toward an Effective Filtering Mechanism under the New York Convention.”
  • Adam Plenkiewicz (BCL/LLB’14, McGill), “Comparing Proximate Causation in International Law.”
  • Fabio Santacroce (Freshfields, Rome), “The emergency arbitrator: a full-fledged arbitrator rendering an enforceable decision?”

We also wish to thank the many scholars and junior practitioners who submitted their thoughtful papers to this contest. The Nappert Prize in International Arbitration will run again in 2016. 

The Fortier Chair, together with the Faculty of Law, is grateful to Sophie Nappert, BCL’86, LLB’86, whose generosity and vision have made this prize possible.

Congratulations to the four winners!

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