Queen’s ELSA mooters (standing, l-r:) Devon Luca, Cameron Rempel, Brandon Chung and Gurpaul Sandhu, with four judges at the competition.
Queen’s ELSA mooters (standing, l-r:) Devon Luca, Cameron Rempel, Brandon Chung and Gurpaul Sandhu, with four judges at the competition.

Queen’s Law has won second place in the All American Regional Round of the ELSA Moot Court competition, moving on to compete in the international round. The team of Law’17 mooters Gurpal Sandhu, Cameron Rempel, Devon Luca and Brandon Chung is on its way to the finals after a harrowing competition on home turf.

Queen’s hosted the All American Regional Round of the moot from March 2–6, welcoming 14 teams from around the Americas and some of the brightest minds in international trade law to Kingston. After defeating the University of Ottawa in the semi-final round, the Queen’s Law team placed a close second to the Universidad del Rosario from Bogata, Colombia.

The mooters enjoyed their experience. “It was amazing!” says Luca. “I learned a lot not only from our faculty coach and the firms we visited, but also from my teammates with respect to how they think about and approach legal issues. My main take away from the experience is how to think analytically quickly.”

The ELSA Moot simulates a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement hearing. This year’s issue dealt with a country's ability to subsidize the development and implementation of a renewable energy technology where the subsidies at issue are, arguably, distorting international trade.
 
Participating teams represent both the complainant and respondent parties, and present oral submissions in front of a panel. This year’s panelists included several noted trade scholars, such as Professor Debra P. Steger (University of Ottawa), the first Director of the WTO’s Appellate Body Secretariat; Torsten Ström, General Counsel with the Trade Law Bureau, a joint legal unit in the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development; and Pablo Bentes, Managing Director in International Trade & Investment at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C., a specialist in representing sovereign clients before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body.

The Queen's Law community is cheering on its team as the mooters prepare for the finals in Geneva, Switzerland, where they will take on 20 of the world’s top teams in June.

“Everyone on the team took the International Business Law program at ‘the Castle’ so we've been to Geneva and the WTO before,” says Luca. “All in all, we are excited to be going.”

Learn more about the ELSA Moot.