Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law Volume 7

PANEL ONE

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

MR. IAN LAIRD: Welcome, everyone, to the Seventh Annual Juris Conference on International Investment Law and Arbitration.

I want to introduce my co-chairs of the conference: Professor Freddie Sourgens from Washburn University Law School, Faculty of Law; Dr. Borzu Sabahi, from Curtis Mallet and Georgetown Law Center; and Todd Weiler, who needs no introduction, editor in chief of NAFTAclaims.com and Senior Editorial Adviser for InvestmentClaims.com, independent arbitrator, expert and counsel.

So, this, as I said, is the seventh annual version of this conference, and we’re very pleased to bring it to you again this year because it’s a very unique model, unique format for this type of conference, but one that has been uniquely successful as well, and I have to give full credit to my colleague Todd here for thinking this up many years ago. And the idea is to bring two young practitioners, academics who are rising in the field, to address a particular issue, a contentious issue, and basically take contrary opposite sides of that position, write a paper, and then present it to a more senior panel of practitioners and academics to generate a discussion, to generate a bit of heat--a bit of dialectic, so to speak--and we have done that now for seven years. And so we’ve had over 50 of our young colleagues come up and be put to the test, and they have done exceedingly well over the years. Many of them are partners now. Many have gone on to tenured professorships and so forth. So, we feel very privileged to be part of their development and part of the process of developing our young practitioners in this growing and interesting field. So, thanks to Todd. That’s my first “thank you.”

I want to say “thank you” to the organizer, Juris Publishing, Juris Conferences. Michael Kitzen, the President of Juris, is here.

And we have four topics, and they’re set out in your materials. Each of my colleagues is going to introduce each of the panels. Our first panel is about whether the energy sector should be a regime separate and apart from the general bilateral and multilateral investment protection agreements, and I will ask my colleague, Professor Sourgens, to introduce that panel.