CIAA is presenting a talk on Friday, April 8, 2022 from 11:15AM-1PM EST titled: Investment Arbitration and Constitutional Law: How do constitutional writs and due process claims hinder the Arbitration procedure? This talk will feature Justice Alejandro Linares-Cantillo, who is an associate Justice to the Colombian Constitutional Court. Jorge A. Mestre, a partner in Rivero Mestre and expert in arbitration in Latin America, based in Miami. The talk will be moderated by Columbia Law School Professors Alejandro Garro and Kabir Duggal. The event will be in-person at the Law School and there will be a Q&A session at the end for students to ask questions.
Attendees can participate via Zoom or in-person in WJWH L107. Please register here and email Natalia Negret (nn2406@columbia.edu) or the Registry if you don't hold a Columbia ID.
Speaker Biographies:
Alejandro Linares-Cantillo, a Colombian lawyer, has practiced law for 20 years in Gomez Pinzon Asociados, a law firm that specializes in international business law and international litigation. Before becoming a judge, he was General Counsel at Ecopetrol, Colombia’s State-owned oil & gas company. In December 2015, he was appointed to the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Colombia, and since then he has held the position of Justice of this Tribunal. He also has wide experience in the academic field, including international arbitration.
Jorge A. Mestre engages exclusively in a commercial-litigation practice and is Board Certified in International Litigation and Arbitration by The Florida Bar. A seasoned practitioner, Mestre has litigated cases through trial in both federal district court and Florida state court and has handled appeals before numerous state and federal courts. He has served as a party-appointed arbitrator in cases administered by the ICC, the AAA, the ICDR, and in an ad hoc international arbitration—experiences that give him a valuable understanding of how arbitration tribunals work.
Among his many high-stakes matters, Mestre represented Dr. Craig Wright, also known as Satoshi Nakamoto (the inventor of Bitcoin) in a $600 billion trial, and obtained a jury verdict in favor of Dr. Wright, finding that the defense was entitled to none of the multibillion-dollar Satoshi Nakamoto fortune. Mestre also successfully represented a Chevron attorney in a case that was part of the $100 billion, 18-year litigation over Chevron’s alleged environmental damage in the Amazon.
Alejandro Garro has been a member of the Columbia Law School Faculty since 1981, and is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law. He also holds the position of Honorary Professor of Law at the National University of Buenos Aires. Professor Garro has been teaching in the fields of Comparative Law, International Business Transactions and Latin American Legal Systems. His principal areas of teaching and research focus on the regime of international commercial contracts and dispute resolution. He has authored books on international commercial arbitration, international sales, and secured transactions, as well as scores of scholarly articles and contributions. He graduated from the National University of La Plata School of Law (Argentina), subsequently graduating with an LLM from Louisiana State University, and a doctoral degree in law (JSD) from Columbia University. He is admitted to practice in Buenos Aires, Madrid, and New York
Kabir Duggal is a senior international arbitration advisor at Arnold & Porter LLP. He focuses his practice on international investment arbitration, international commercial arbitration and public international law matters, serving both as counsel and arbitrator, and has received several accolades. He has been ranked as the 4th Most Highly Regarded Future Leader in the Americas (Who's Who Legal 2019) and was the youngest practitioner to be listed in the Global Listing of Arbitrators (Who's Who Legal 2020 and 2021). Kabir is also a Lecturer-In-Law at Columbia Law School, teaching "International Investment Law and Arbitration".
