International Law Writing: DWT Increases Awards

For decades, the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine has continuously supported the Davis Wright Tremaine International Law Writing Award Competition at Lewis & Clark Law School. Under rules established by the firm, Lewis & Clark JD students compete for the best paper on an international law topic, as selected by a faculty review committee.

In past years, the author of the top paper received an award of $2,000, while the author of the second best paper received $500. This year, DWT has decided to increase the first place award to $2,500 and the second place award to $1,000. 

Retired DWT attorney Ron Ragen explained that the firm did so to recognize “the increasing excellence in the papers submitted (both in content and in professionalism of format and presentation) in recent years.” According to Ragen, “We hope that by doing so, we will encourage an even greater increase in papers submitted this year and in the future and an even higher level of research and writing.”

“We are grateful to DWT for this vote of confidence in our students and for its ongoing support for this important competition,” said Dean Jennifer Johnson.

The 2019 deadline for submission of original research papers is April 18. More information can be found here.

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Past award winners from 2013 – 2018

2018:

• Ayla Ashaboglu, Potential Investment Treaty Claims in the Aftermath of Turkey’s 2016 Failed Coup
• Ryan Settles, Human Rights as a Means of Advancing Justice in Rural Development: Conceiving and Implementing a Right of Peoples to Food Sovereignty

2017:

• Dwight Mears, India’s Retreat from Investor-Friendly International Investment Agreements: Having Its Cake and Eating It Too
• Ramon Henderson, Denial of Benefits Provisions: An Antiquated Approach to International Investment.

2016:

• Whitney Magnuson, Confronting an Imminent Wave of Climate Change Migrants: Lessons and Opportunities in International Governance Afforded by the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
• Thomas Payne, Teaching Old Law New Tricks: Applying and Adapting State Responsibility to Cyber Operations.

2015:

• Joseph Callahan, Corporal Punishment: A Socially Acceptable Human Rights Violation?
• Chester Hill, No Time Like the Present: Why ICSID Should Adopt an Appellate System and How It Could Operate

2014:

• Whitney Magnuson, Marine Conservation Campaigners as Pirates: The Consequences ofSea Shepherd
• Brandon Hawkins, Under the Radar, but Within Plain Sight: The Present and Future Legality of Drone Warfare to Counter Asymmetric Threats.

2013:

• Hannah P. Fenley, The NGO Crisis in Egypt: Can International Investment Treaties Prevent Diplomatic Conflicts in the Nonprofit Sector? 
• 
  Lia Comerford, Removing Barriers to Technical Regulations: The TBT Agreement and Exceptions for Discriminatory Measures