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Third Annual
WILLEM C. VIS (EAST)
INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION MOOT
Hong Kong SAR, China
October 2005 - April 2006
Oral Arguments
27 March - 2 April 2006
Organized by:
The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (East Asia Branch)
Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre
38/F, Two Exchange Square
8 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong SAR
Hosted by:
The School of Law of City University of Hong Kong
83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR
THE RULES
INTRODUCTION
I. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot
1. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is an annual competition of teams representing law schools throughout the world. In the Twelfth Annual Moot held in 2004 -2005, over 150 law school teams participated. More than 800 students were members of the teams. The Moot was judged by nearly 400 lawyers and professors from around the world.
2. The Hong Kong event ("Vis East") was organized for the first time in 2003 - 2004 in order to afford more law students, particularly from Asian jurisdictions, the opportunity to participate in the Moot. Like the Vis Moot in Vienna, the Vis East welcomes students from all jurisdictions. Fourteen schools participated in the first Vis East, which welcomed over 150 students, coaches and arbitrators from Asia Europe and America. The Second Vis East grew to 18 schools and 170 participants.
3. Goals. The Arbitral Moot in Vienna and the Vis East ("the Moot") are intended to stimulate the study of international commercial law, especially the legal texts prepared by UNCITRAL, and the use of international commercial arbitration to resolve international commercial disputes. The international nature of the Moot is intended to lead participants to interpret the texts of international commercial law in the light of different legal systems and to develop an expertise in advocating a position before an arbitral panel composed of arbitrators from different legal systems. A complementary social program at the time of the oral hearings promotes friendships that can last long after the Moot itself is over.
4. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is designed to be a multi-faceted educational program in the form of a competition. It is not intended to be a competition with incidental educational benefits. The rules and procedures in the Moot should be interpreted in the light of that goal.
II. Organization of the Willem C. Vis (East) International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Hong Kong
5. Sponsors and Supporters. The Vis East is sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (EAB) and hosted by the City University School of Law. It is also supported by a number of arbitration bodies and business entities, including: Pace University, The International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, Lawasia, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and CIETAC.
6. The Vis East consists of the preparation of a memorandum for claimant, a memorandum for respondent and oral hearings.
7. Venue. The Vis East oral hearings will be held in Hong Kong, at the School of Law of City University. The general rounds and semi-final rounds will take place from Tuesday to Saturday, 28 March - 1 April 2006. The final rounds will take place on Sunday, 2 April at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.
8. The first event during the oral hearings is a welcome party and official opening, for student participants and arbitrators, on the evening of Monday, 27 March 2006. The gala awards banquet, on Sunday afternoon 2 April, concludes the Vis East events.
9. Language. The Vis East will be conducted in English.
RULES
I. Registration
10. Registration in the Vis East is a three-step process consisting of submission of the registration form, payment of the registration fee and submission of the memorandum for claimant. Although registration forms will be accepted until 2 December 2004, registration prior to distribution of the Problem on 7 October 2005 is desirable.
11. Receipt of the registration form, payment of the registration fee and e-mail submission of the memoranda for claimant and for respondent will be acknowledged to the team contact person. Receipt of the hard copies of the memoranda will not be acknowledged, since it is not administratively feasible to do so.
12. Registration fee. The registration fee is US $650 or HK$5000.
13. The registration fee must be paid by 2 December 2005 in order to compete in the Vis East, unless the Hong Kong Director has specifically agreed to a later date. Payment of the registration fee made by cheque or transfer payable to the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, HSBC account #004-002-554830-001. All transfer fees must be paid by the transferor. The transfer must NOT be payable to City University or it will be refused by the Bank. The transfer must also indicate the name of the university for which the registration fee has been paid in order for the account of the participating university to be credited.
14. Cheques must be sent to the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (East Asia Branch) at HKIAC, 38/F, 2 Exchange Square, Central Hong Kong. The name of the school must be clearly indicated on the back of the cheque. The registration fee is paid only when the Chartered Institute has received the cheque or the payment has been credited to the above-mentioned account at HSBC.
15. The registration fee includes an invitation to the welcome party for all
team members, coaches and accompanying persons on Monday 27 March 2006. It also
includes tickets for the awards banquet on Sunday, 2 April 2006, following the
Final Round of hearings, for a maximum of four team members registered in Hong
Kong, and one accompanying team coach. Additional team members and accompanying
persons are also welcome to attend, but will be asked to pay for the extra
tickets on or before 30 March. The tickets must be presented for admission to the
banquet. Lost tickets will not be replaced.
16. Registration form. The Team Registration Form includes space for two names and addresses. All communications concerning the Vis East will automatically be sent to the person listed at the bottom of the form. It is the responsibility of the designated person to distribute all relevant material to the team. The person listed at the bottom of the form must give an e-mail address to which communications can be sent. The e-mail account must accept messages with attachments of up to one megabyte, which many free e-mail accounts (hotmail, yahoo, etc) cannot do. A mailing list will be established to which general messages for all teams will be sent. The names of additional recipients of such messages may be submitted for inclusion on the list. They will also receive all communications sent to all teams or to the team in question.
17. Communications between the team and the Hong Kong Director through anyone other than the designated person are at the risk of the team.
18. The registration fee of a team whose registration is withdrawn prior to 2 December 2005, i.e., the day prior to the day the memorandum for claimant is due by e-mail, will be refunded in full.
19. A team that submits its memorandum for claimant will be paired with two other teams for the exchange of memoranda, as described in Part IV below, and will be scheduled to meet those two teams in the first two oral arguments, as described in Part V below. Withdrawal after submission of the memorandum for claimant would affect the Moot for the two teams paired for the exchange of memoranda and the first two oral arguments. Therefore, teams that have submitted the memorandum for claimant are expected to participate in the entire Moot, including the oral arguments, and no refund of the registration fee will be made.
II. The Problem
20. Subject Matter. The Problem in the 2005-2006 Moot involves a controversy arising out of a international sale of goods subject to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).
21. Dispute Settlement. The controversy is before an arbitral tribunal pursuant to the Rules of the Chicago International Dispute Resolution Association (CIDRA: www.cidra.org). The parties have agreed that the arbitration will be held in Vindobona, Danubia. Danubia has enacted the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (Model Law). Danubia, Equatoriana, Mediterraneo and Oceana, the four states that are, or may be involved, are all parties to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention).
22.The Arbitration. By the time the Vis East begins, the claimant has filed its request for arbitration, the respondent has filed its statement of defense and the arbitral tribunal has been appointed. The Problem will consist of the statements of claim and defense with their exhibits, any orders of the arbitral tribunal issued prior to the date on which the Problem is distributed, and the clarifications described below. The competition involves writing memoranda and oral argument in support of the positions of the claimant and respondent.
23. Distribution. The Problem will be distributed by the Institute of International Commercial Law on Friday, 7 October 2005, by posting on the Arbitral Moot’s Web site and the Vis East website. The URL for the Moot is http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/vis. The URL for the Vis East Moot is http://cityu.edu.hk/cisgmoot/index.htm.
24. Facts. The facts in the dispute that is the subject matter of the
competition are given in the Problem. No additional facts may be introduced
unless they are a logical and necessary extension of the given facts.
Example A:
The subject matter of the dispute in the Fourth Moot was men's suits.
It was legitimate to assume that the suits were made of cloth. It was not
legitimate to assume that they were, or should have been, made of pure wool. If
a team intended to base an argument on the material out of which the suits were
made, the team should have requested a clarification of the Problem. By way of
an additional example, a team may wish to base an argument on the apparent
intention or state of mind of a person who sent a communication of some sort. It
would rarely be possible on the basis of that which is given in the Problem to
state as a fact that the person had a particular intention or state of mind.
However, it would be legitimate to suggest that on the basis of the facts given
the Arbitral Tribunal could (or even should) conclude that the desired intention
or state of mind was present.
Example B:
The subject matter of the dispute in the Twelfth Moot (Second Vis East) was cocoa
beans. The real, and extreme price movements of cocoa beans during the period in
question were given and were relevant to the dispute. Since the price movements in
the Moot Problem were real, the reasons for those price movements were also real.
It was permissible to refer to those reasons in the memoranda, if they were considered
relevant. It would also have been permissible to refer to any such facts in oral argument,
but only if they had been referred to in the memorandum of either party to that argument
or if they were so well known that it could be assumed thery were known to the other party
and to the members of the tribunal. The reasons for the price movements would not have
qualified under the latter test.
25. Statements of fact alleged by a team that do not qualify under the preceding section are not true. Therefore, basing an argument on any such alleged facts will be considered to be in breach of the rules of the competition and to be professionally unethical. Arbitrators will enforce this rule strictly in both the memorandum and oral arguments and will evaluate the team's efforts accordingly.
26. Clarifications. Requests for clarification of the Problem may be sent to the Hong Kong Director prior to 26 October 2005. Requests for clarification should be limited to matters that would appear to have legal significance in the context of the Problem. A request for clarification must include a short explanation of the expected significance of the clarification. Any request that does not contain such an explanation will be ignored. Requests should be addressed solely to the following dedicated e-address: clarify@cityu.edu.hk.
27. Clarifications issued by the Institute of International Commercial Law in the form of a Procedural Order from the Arbitral Tribunal will be distributed to all teams by e-mail on or before 2 November 2005. Teams are responsible for making sure that they have received the clarifications even if they were not registered as of 2 November. Clarifications issued in the name of the Arbitral Tribunal become part of the Problem.
III. Teams
28. Composition. Teams may come either from a law school or from another university level institution that includes law as part of its program of study. Each participating law school or other institution may enter one team. A team is composed of two or more students registered at the institution. Students may be registered either for a first degree or for an advanced degree and need not be from the country in which the institution is located. There is no maximum limit on the number of students who may be members of the team. No student who has been either admitted or licensed to practice law is eligible to participate. No student may argue in both the Vienna and Hong Kong competitions in the same year. Teams may include former participants. However, except with written permission from the Director of the Vis East, students who have participated in an argument after an elimination round in a previous Arbitral Moot (whether Round of 32 in Vienna, or Round of 8 in Hong Kong), may not participate in the oral arguments. Eligibility to participate in the competition is determined as of 8 December 2005.
29. List of team members. The list of team members competing in Hong Kong must be submitted to the Hong Kong Director at City University by email as a separate computer file at the time the memorandum for claimant is submitted. Certificates of participation for participating team members will be prepared from the lists submitted to the Institute. Therefore, names should be in the form in which they should appear on the certificates. Members of the team may be dropped or added at any time, but any changes in the composition of the team must be specifically communicated to the Hong Kong Director by e-mail, prior to the first oral rounds.
30. Participation. All members of the team may participate in preparation of the memoranda for claimant and respondent.
31. In each of the oral hearings two members of the team will present the argument. Other members of the team may not aid them during the argument in any way. Different members of the team may participate in the different hearings. Therefore, between two and eight members may participate in the oral hearings. However, to be eligible for the Award for best individual oralist, a participant must have argued at least once for the claimant and once for the respondent. The average score per argument will be calculated and the award will be determined on that basis.
IV. Written Memoranda
32. Memoranda. Memoranda. Each team must submit a memorandum in support of the claimant's position to the Vis East administration by e-mail by 8 December 2005. Each claimant memorandum will be sent to one of the other teams by e-mail by 12 December 2005, or as soon after as is possible. Submission of the memorandum for claimant is an integral part of the registration procedure. Therefore, teams that fail to submit the memorandum by 8 December 2005 will be considered not to have completed registration for the Moot and will not be able to compete.
33.Each team will prepare a memorandum in support of the respondent's position in response to the memorandum in support of the claimant's position that was sent to it. The Hong Kong Director will determine to which team a memorandum in support of the claimant position will be sent. The memorandum for respondent must be submitted by e-mail by 26 January 2006. Teams who fail to submit the memorandum for respondent by 26 January 2006 will be considered to have withdrawn from the Moot.
34. The memorandum for respondent must be responsive to the arguments made in the memorandum for claimant. Nevertheless, the memorandum for claimant to which a memorandum for respondent is to be prepared may not have made all of the arguments that the team preparing the memorandum for respondent believes should have been made. The team preparing the memorandum for respondent may deal with those issues. Such additional arguments (arguments in response to arguments not made by your opponent) would not normally be made in a real arbitration. However, they may be appropriate in the Moot. If such arguments are made, they must be identified in an appropriate manner so that the jury judging the memoranda and the arbitrators hearing the oral arguments will be able to consider them separately.
35. Hard copies of the memorandum. Although copies of the memoranda will be distributed between teams by e-mail, many of the arbitrators for the oral arguments and the readers of the memoranda for the purpose of ranking and evaluating them will receive hard copies. Therefore, hard copies must arrive at City University by the dates set out in the schedule. If, for any reason including errors on the part of the carrier, at least five hard copies of the memorandum for claimant have not been received from a team by 15 December 2005 or the memorandum for respondent by 1 February 2006, the names and addresses of the readers will be sent to the team contact person. It will be the responsibility of the team to send copies to the reader itself. Since the dates by which the memoranda will be sent to the readers are very close to the date when the memoranda are due by e-mail, the hard copies may have to be sent to City University prior to the deadline for sending them by e-mail if they are to be sent to the readers by City University.
36. Elements of style. Paragraphs must be numbered and references to statements in either one’s own memorandum or, in the case of the memorandum for respondent, to statements in the opponent’s memorandum for claimant must be to the paragraph number.
37. The memoranda are intended to be of practical use to the arbitrators. They are not intended to be scholarly dissertations. Therefore, citations in the memorandum and the List of Authorities should be limited to those that advance the argument being made. Excessive citation will be counted negatively in evaluating the memorandum.
38. Citations must be in the text of the memorandum and not in footnotes or endnotes. Citations in the text should refer to a List of Authorities in which the full citation is given. For example, a reference to a book might say “Paulsson et al p. 456? a citation to a court decision in the United States might say “Smith v. Jones (U.S.)?and a decision of the Supreme Court of Germany might say “BGH 31 October 2001?
39. The List of Authorities should be in a form that is intelligible to all who will read the memorandum. That includes the members of the other teams, the arbitrators in the oral hearings and the members of the jury who will judge the written phase of the competition. Most of the readers of the memorandum will be from other countries. The style of citation of judicial decisions or articles in legal journals that is common in one country may not be intelligible to participants from other countries. Therefore, deviation from the standard style of citation in your country may be appropriate.
40. Care should be taken in the use of legal doctrines and terminology (including Latin maxims) common in some legal systems that are not found in the CISG, Model Law, New York Convention or CIDRA Rules, and that may not be known to teams or arbitrators from other legal systems.
41. Memoranda may be no longer than thirty-five (35) 8?x 11 inch or A4 typed pages, including any statement of facts, argument or discussion. Cover pages, tables of contents, indices, lists of authorities or other material that does not consist of facts, argument or discussion may be in addition.
42. No type style smaller than 12 point may be used. The memorandum should be typed at 1?line-spacing. All margins must be at least one inch or 2.5 cm. Reproduction of all copies must be full sized and clear.
43. Memoranda that are longer than 35 pages of facts and argument, or that use a smaller type than 12 point, or that have narrower margins than allowed will not be submitted to the second round of judging.
44. Hard copies of memoranda must be bound or stapled securely so that the binding or stapling will hold throughout the Moot. Experience shows memoranda that are held together by rubber bands, light weight staples, paper clips or other insecure means will not hold together, so that the arbitrators may not have the memorandum as the team prepared it. This obviously means that the memorandum will not receive the consideration that it may otherwise deserve.
45. The name of the team
and whether the memorandum is for the claimant or for the respondent must appear
prominently on the outside cover page so that it can easily be read without
opening the memorandum. Claimant’s memorandum should have a green title
page; Respondent’s memorandum should have a blue title page.Avoid dard coloured paper which may obscure the team names and whether it is
the claimant's or the respondent's memorandum.
46. Memorandum Revision. A memorandum may not be revised once it has been submitted to the Hong Kong Director, including for missing pages, typographical or grammatical errors or for problems caused by faulty computer software. Revised or additional pages submitted will be ignored. It is not possible either to file them or to send them as additional pages to the arbitrators. Sufficient time should be left prior to submission to verify the text to be submitted.
47. Scoring of Memoranda. A jury selected by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (EAB) will score the memoranda on the basis of the quality of the analysis, persuasiveness of argument, thoroughness of research and the clarity of the writing. The jury will take into account whether arguments are based on facts not found in the Problem or clarifications and that are not logical and necessary extensions of the given facts. When judging the memorandum for respondent, jurors will consider whether it is responsive to the arguments raised by the claimant.
48. The memoranda for claimant and for respondent will each be judged in two rounds. In the first round the members of the jury will each receive four memoranda. They will be asked to rank them in order of merit. If there is a sufficient number of jury members available, each memorandum will be submitted to at least three jury members. On the basis of the results from the first round of judging, approximately one-fourth of the memoranda will be selected for submission to a separate international jury for determination of the winners of the awards for best memorandum in each category.
49. Submission of Memoranda. Each team is to submit in total six (6) hard copies of the memorandum for claimant and the memorandum for respondent in addition to the submission by e-mail. The memorandum submitted by e-mail must be submitted as a single computer file so that the memorandum can be printed complete with cover page. If the necessary software is available, it is recommended that the memorandum be submitted in PDF format. In addition, at the same time the memorandum for claimant is sent, a separate file must be sent by e-mail with the names of the members of the team.
50. Place for Submission of Memoranda. The submission of the e-mailed copy of the memorandum as well as the six (6) copies of the memorandum for claimant and for respondent should be sent to:
Louise Barrington, Hong Kong Director
Vis East International Arbitration Moot
City University of Hong Kong
83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon Tong
Hong Kong SAR, China
Tel. (852) 2788 7388
Fax. (852) 2788 7530
E-mail: cisgmoot@cityu.edu.hk
51. The dates on which memoranda are due in Hong Kong are as follows:
Memorandum for claimant:
E-mail: 8 December 2005
Hard copies: 6 copies, 15 December 2005
Memorandum for respondent:
E-mail: 26 January 2006
Hard copies: 6 copies, 1 February 2006
52. Receipt of e-mailed copies of the memoranda will be acknowledged. Receipt of the hard copies will not be acknowledged, since it is not administratively feasible to do so. If hard copies have not been received by the dates they are due, the team will be notified.
53. It should be pointed out that packages of memoranda arriving from outside Hong Kong must be accompanied by a customs declaration or they may be delayed in customs and customs duty may be charged.
54. If the sending post office or courier service requires that the package containing the memoranda be given a value for customs purposes, that valuation should be its commercial value, i.e., no commercial value, and not the cost of preparing the memoranda.
55. The designated contact person for each team will be sent the memorandum for claimant of another team, to which a memorandum for respondent must be prepared by e-mail by 12 December 2005, or as soon after as is possible. If the contact person will not be available at the address given during that period, a substitute person or address must be notified to the Institute prior to 1 December 2005.
56. On 2 February 2006, or as soon after as possible, the designated contact person will be sent by e-mail the memorandum for respondent prepared in reply to its memorandum for claimant, as well as the memoranda of the other teams against which it will argue in its third and fourth oral hearings.
57. Copyright. Memoranda once submitted shall be the property of the organizers of the Vis East and may be copyrighted by them.
V. Oral Hearings
58. Venue. The oral hearings will be held at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
59. General Rounds. Each team will argue four times in the general rounds, twice as claimant and twice as respondent. In its first two oral hearings, each team will argue once as claimant and once as respondent. The respondent will be the team that prepared the memorandum for respondent in opposition to the memorandum for claimant that was sent to it. In its third and fourth oral hearings the teams will argue against teams with which they were not paired for the purpose of preparing written memoranda.
60. The general rounds will be scheduled so that, in principle, each team will argue once per day on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If there should be an odd number of participating teams, or occasionally for other reasons, it may be necessary for a team to argue twice on the same day.
61. Duration of Oral Presentation. The oral presentation of each team is, in principle, thirty (30) minutes. The team should allocate equitably the time available to the two individual advocates. However, the arbitral tribunal may exceed the time limits stated so long as neither team is allowed more than forty-five (45) minutes to present its argument, including the time necessary to answer the questions of the tribunal. It will be the responsibility of the tribunal to ensure that the teams are treated fairly.
62. Arguments. Claimants and respondents in their first hearing should expect to rely on the arguments given in their written memoranda or to be prepared to justify why that position has been abandoned. In subsequent hearings arbitrators may be less demanding on this score as it is expected that teams will improve their arguments during the Moot.
63. Questions by Arbitrators. The arbitrators are requested to act during the oral hearings as much as possible the way they would in a real arbitration. There are significant differences in style dependent both on individual personalities and on perceptions of the role of an arbitrator (or judge) in oral argument. Some arbitrators, or arbitral tribunals, may interrupt a presentation with persistent or even aggressive questioning. Other arbitrators, or arbitral tribunals, may listen to an entire argument without asking any questions. Therefore, teams should be prepared for both styles of oral presentation.
64. Order of presentation. Some panels of arbitrators will ask one team to present its argument on all of the issues before the other team is permitted to present its argument. Other panels of arbitrators will ask both teams to argue one issue first before they both argue in respect of a second issue. Normally the party who has raised the issue will argue first. Therefore, normally the claimant would argue first, if it is to present its arguments on all of the issues before the respondent is permitted to argue. However, if the respondent has raised an objection to the jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal, the panel may ask it to present its arguments on that issue before the claimant responds to it.
65. The arbitrators will decide whether rebuttal arguments will be permitted. Whether or not rebuttal will be allowed can be expected to change from one argument to the next.
66. Scoring. Each arbitrator will score each oralist on a scale of 25 to 50. The scores of the two oralists will be added to constitute the team score for that argument. Therefore, each team could score a maximum of 100 points from each arbitrator in every argument, that is, a maximum of 1200 points for the four arguments. Arbitrators will score the oral arguments without knowledge of the results of earlier arguments. Some arbitrators will have participated in evaluating the memoranda of teams whose oral arguments they later hear. Although they will be aware of their own evaluation of the memoranda, they will be without knowledge of the evaluations given by other arbitrators.
67. Quarter Final Round. After the general rounds, the scores of each team for its oral presentation in the four arguments will be totaled. The eight teams that have obtained the highest composite scores will meet Saturday morning, 1 April 2006 at 9.30 am. If there is a tie for 8th place, the decision as to which team will enter the elimination rounds will be determined by lot. The teams will be paired so that the first and eighth, the second and seventh, etc. will argue against one another. Ranking of the teams in the General Rounds will not be divulged except to the teams concerned after the close of the competition.
68. Semi Final Round. The four winners of the Quarter Final Round will meet in the Semi Final round on Saturday afternoon, 1 April 2006 at 12.30 pm.
69. Final Round. The two winners of the Semi-final Round will meet in the Final Round on Sunday at 2 April 2006 10.00 am, at Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.
70. Determination as to which team is claimant and which is respondent. If the two teams in any of the elimination rounds, including the final round, argued against one another in the general rounds, they will argue for the opposite party in the elimination round. If they did not argue against one another in the general rounds, when one of the two teams in the preceding round was claimant and the other was respondent, they will argue for the opposite party to the one they represented in the preceding round. If both teams argued for the claimant or both argued for the respondent in the preceding round, the decision as to which team will be claimant and which will be respondent will be determined by lot.
71. Winning Team. The winning team of the oral phase of the Vis East is the team that wins the final round.
VI. Assistance
72. Written Memoranda. Although the students should do all the research and writing of the memoranda themselves - without assistance from anyone who is not a student member of the team - faculty advisors, coaches and others may help identify the issues, comment on the persuasiveness of the arguments the students have made in drafts and, when necessary, suggest other arguments the students might consider employing. However, the final product must be that of the students - not their advisors. A certificate signed by either person whose name appears on the registration form stating that no person other than a student team member has participated in the writing of the memorandum must be submitted with the hard copies of the memoranda.
73. Oral Hearings. There is no restriction on the amount of coaching that a team may receive in preparation for the oral hearings. It is expected and encouraged that teams will have practice arguments, whether against other members of the team or against other teams that will participate in the Moot.
74. In each oral hearing two members of the team will present the argument. No communication with other members of the team who may be present at the hearing is permitted.
75. One purpose of the Vis East is to develop the art of advocacy in international commercial arbitration proceedings. Observance of the performance of other participants is one way to develop that art. Therefore, attendance of team members at the arguments of other teams is permitted, except that no team, or friend or relative of a member of a team, is permitted to attend arguments of other teams against which it is scheduled to argue at a later time in the general rounds. Violation of this rule will disqualify a team from participation in the subsequent rounds. Schools sending teams to both Vis East and the Vis Moot in Vienna should not attend arguments in Hong Kong of schools they are scheduled to meet in Vienna.
VII. Awards
76. The awards to be given in the Vis East are:
Eric Bergsten Award for Best Written Memorandum for Claimant in the Vis East competition.
Fali Nariman Award for Best Written Memorandum for Respondent in the Vis East competition.
Neil Kaplan Award for Best Individual Oralist in the Vis East competition. This award for the general rounds will be won by the individual advocate with the highest composite score during these rounds. To be eligible for this award a participant must have argued at least once for the claimant and once for the respondent.
David Hunter Award for Best Team Orals. This award will be made to the winning team in the final round of the oral hearings.
VIII. Interpretation of the Rules
77. Requests. Requests for interpretation of these rules or clarifications of the Problem are to be addressed to the Hong Kong Director, City University of Hong Kong, School of Law, at e-mail: clarify@cityu.edu.hk. They will automatically be forwarded to the Institute of International Commercial Law. All interpretations, as well as any waivers, consents, or other decisions are at the discretion of the organizers of the Arbitral Moot and the Vis East.
IX. Mailing Address
78. All communications in regard to the Vis East should be sent to:
Louise Barrington, Hong Kong Director
Williem C. Vis (East) International Commercial Arbitration Moot
City University of Hong Kong School of Law
83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon Tong
Hong Kong SAR, China
Tel. (852) 2788 7388
Fax. (852) 2788 7530
E-mail: cisgmoot@cityu.edu.hk