2019 DWT International Law Writing Competition Winners Named

The 2019 DWT International Law Writing Awards winners are Alison Roth ’19 and Katelyn Kindberg ’19. Established through the generosity of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, the Lewis & Clark Law School award program provides a $2,500 stipend for the best research paper written in the past year by a Lewis & Clark JD student on any topic in private or public international law, and a $1,000 stipend for the second best paper. The law firm generously increased the size of the awards to those amounts this year.

Alison Roth received first place for her paper, Drafting International Investment Agreements to Create a Healthier Environment for Intellectual Property and Global Health. She examines the potential for international investment agreements (IIAs) to serve as an additional layer of protection for intellectual property by clarifying the circumstances under which a compulsory license is appropriate. Alison argues that IIAs can be used to protect intellectual property by narrowing TRIPS’ authorizing language, without unduly restricting access to medicines.

Katelyn Kindberg received second place for her paper, A GLImmer of Hope: The Case for Gender Lens Investing in ASEAN. She explores the phenomenon of gender lens investing (GLI), which seeks to deploy capital in support of gender equality as both a human right and an economic advantage.  Katelyn focuses on the potential of GLI in the ASEAN countries, arguing that incentivizing and promoting foreign GLI in the region could help achieve Sustainable Development Goals and bridge the gap between the region’s expressed desire to achieve gender parity and its socio-cultural implementation struggles. Katelyn Kindberg

Professor George Foster, the Chair of the International Law Committee, expressed admiration for the winners and pride in having supervised both papers. “It is not often that the review committee selects two papers written in the same course—in this case, Fall 2018’s International Investment Law—but the awards were certainly deserved,” Foster said. “Both papers were thoroughly researched, exceptionally well written, and broke new ground in their respective areas.”