Skip to main content

26 February 2020

Commercial Law Lecturer wins New York essay prize

Congratulations to Soterios Loizou who has been presented with the prestigious Smit-Lowenfeld Prize for his essay on international arbitration.

Soterios Loizou presented with the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize
Soterios Loizou (centre) presented with the Smit-Lowenfeld Prize by The International Arbitration Club of New York

Soterios, a Lecturer in Commercial Law in The Dickson Poon School of Law, was awarded the prize for his article, Revisiting the ‘Content-of-Laws’ Enquiry in International Arbitration, which was published in the Louisiana Law Review.

Amongst other things, the article provides clear guidelines for arbitral tribunals and national courts reviewing arbitral awards in annulment proceedings, and offers model clauses, arbitration rules, and national law provisions on the content-of-laws enquiry.

The Prize is named after Professors Hans Smit, Columbia Law School; and Andreas Lowenfeld, New York University’s School of Law, and it celebrates the best article in the field of international arbitration published in the previous year.

Rory Millson, chair of the selection committee which chose the article and retired partner at US law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said Soterios’s piece ‘challenges conventional wisdom and offers new frameworks for consideration by practitioners, courts and tribunals.’

Soterios said: “I am deeply grateful to The International Arbitration Club of New York for this great honour. Professors Hans Smit and Andreas Lowenfeld were pathbreakers combining legal theory and practice of the highest calibre. I would also like to thank both my colleagues and the administration at The Dickson Poon School of Law for the invaluable inspiration and support throughout this research project.”

Soterios was awarded the prize earlier this month by The International Arbitration Club of New York at a dinner held in his honour.

Read Soterios Loizou’s paper: Revisiting the 'Content-of-Laws Enquiry in International Arbitration.

In this story

Soterios Loizou_square (002)

Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law