MPL 3 Quicklinks:
Exclusive: Nalsar Hyderabad today won the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, Vienna.
Puneeth Nagaraj from the Moot Court Committee at Nalsar Hyderabad confirmed the win to Team MPL.
The Nalsar Hyderabad team consisted of speakers Jagdish Menezes and Ishita Bhardwaj along with researcher Ridhi Kabra.
The same team also won the India Pre moot sponsored by Bharucha & Partners last month.
NUJS Kolkata was the only other Indian law school to have won the moot in 2003.
Nalsar’s victory at Vis is sealing an Indian international mooting season of unprecedented success, after NLU Jodhpur won the Stetson moot in Florida last weekend.
Full story to follow.
Mooting Premier League 3 season standings
For more information please refer to the MPL 3 rulebook.
By reading the comments you agree that they are the (often anonymous) personal views and opinions of readers, which may be biased and unreliable, and for which Legally India therefore has no liability. If you believe a comment is inappropriate, please click 'Report to LI' below the comment and we will review it as soon as practicable.
threads most popular
thread most upvoted
comment newest
first oldest
first
Good Man
CLEARLY, IT IS THE BEST LAW SCHOOL OF THE COUNTRY.
student from rmlnlu
If they have won, it is an amazing achievement. Many many congratulations to the team.
Class of 2014
Great job
ps. congrats NALSAR!
we will 'remain where we are' and kick ass in the here and now :)
#Meri zaroorat kam hai, issliye mere zameer mein dum hai..
Read the title - NALSAR wins VIS Vienna for INDIA. Your concluding sentence suggests that as an NLS student you express a desire to dominate other law schools in India. What is wrong with you ?
Do you realize what has just happened ? Get out of this stereotype. No one is disputing NLS being an excellent law school in this post.
Cant blame LI though. As a public news source, they feed the public what the public wants. Much like news channels sensationalizing. LI is in a business and is doing commerce - why should it care at all whether a comment is fair or trivializing something. The more vile, the more trolling, the better! In fact - I dare say, the comments section makes LI much much more popular than it otherwise would be. So no point in blaming LI or making such requests. What say LI? :)
Thanks for your comments.
This is a rather complex issue that we've gone over a lot of times before but allow me to summarise again.
On the one hand, it seems like a fairly harmless bit of fun, which a large number of readers do enjoy reading and don't take too seriously.
And what damage does it actually do? Is it worth censoring something more aggressively, even though it does not violate any laws, does not really hurt anyone and provides amusement to some people?
As for Hilarious' comment: are you in favour of Sibal-style censorship, excising anything that could be 'objectionable' to someone? And who should draw the line between what is and what is not? Do you really think that a paper such as Mint would tie up with LI because of "vile and controversial" comments? Or that the majority of readers come to LI purely for the comments? (I would like to think that people primarily come for the latest news that we wor so hard for, but stick around a bit longer because of the comments, but what do I know - please do share your browsing habits).
If anything, 'low brow' comments get us in more trouble than it's worth and put off and alienate the more serious and respectable audience. So, to protect them, we've hidden the comments behind a health-warning.
I see the comments as an interesting window into the psyche of the law school student and lawyer, and I have learnt nearly as much from reading LI comments as I have from speaking to people. We therefore try to censor as little as possible so others too can partake in this.
We have faced numerous legal threats and notices about comments on this site, and we have always (successfully) stood up to protect users' anonymity, and if it was in any way legally and morally defensible, we have stood up for their right to say whatever they said.
Sure, sometimes stuff people say may be silly and pointless, but that is a part of life, freedom of speech and open discussion. Just ignore the trolls and stop feeding them, and they'll go away.
If you disagree, please feel free to let me know.
Best wishes
Kian
Frankly, I dont think there is anything wrong in it at all - just that it is part of your commercial strategy. And it is better to admit that rather than use this free speech argument. Of course, nothing wrong in promoting more hits to your website - heck - every website strives for that. Also, Bar and Bench also has a comments section, but ppl hardly comment on it. So clearly LI is not relying only on the comments section but has a meaty content to present. I agree. But I do feel that some comments posted are vicious and personal and LI somewhere down the line - loves that. Cause it is more traffic and more people "sticking around the article" and therefore your website.
I actually disagree. Its not "harmless" under any circumstances. It is petty and vicious and does show a side of the psyche of the Indian law student which is sometimes frightening.
I also think that you should draw a line at personal and baseless comments, as well as off the topic comments... after all this is not a rediff board and the commentators are supposed to be educated and rational...
Finally, there are news and there are news, and I dont think your traffic will fundamentally suffer if you act more Sibalesque in relation to certain post when compared to others...
@Hilarious - You make a reasonable point: for LI, comments are a commercial strategy for gaining more hits, and it should not falsely hide behind the "free speech" argument. You seem to imply a little dishonest on LIs part in that it cloaks commercial strategy in altruistic terms. The problem I have with your argument is that there really is no way to prove that LI doesn't believe in free speech and promotes comments only for commercial reasons. Following your top-down reasoning, any successful and popular online news service which gets a lot of comments cannot ever justify comments as an expression of the freedom of speech. Without any arguments against the bona fide nature of LI's justification, you simply do not provide any reason that suggests LI allows comments only for commercial purposes. It seems to me that the fact that LI is very popular (more than Bar & Bench) and gets a lot of comments cannot be used against it.
@Concerned: Even going by what you're saying, why wouldn't you want to see, and at least be aware of, the "psyche of the Indian law student which is sometimes frightening". It's always good to be aware of the dark side, of anything. As for your second comment, I am a little ocnfused: if commentators are supposed to be educated and rational, then why draw a line anyway? You seem to suggest that commentators on LI are not educated and rational, and thus depart from the "normal" students. This may well again be the frightening side you may not want to see. But, well, it exists. And sooned or later you gotta stick your emu head out of the sand.
The mere fact that I have been moved out of my laziness, at least) and participated in this this exchange is reason enough to allow comments, I say!
LI is doing something good - lets get that out of the way. Obviously it wants to commercially be successful - and that is expected and perfectly fine. As part of its commercial strategy - does it love gossip and personal attacks in the comments section - most certainly it does. The reason - more traffic on the website. Kian tacitly recognises this but with more of an emphasis on "free speech" - as if that is the only driving reason.
I do feel that personal and hate filled attacks, innuendos and uncharitable suggestions are something that LI tacitly encourages.
As @Wondered says, you can impute a commercial motive into anything that contributes to a site's popularity.
But if anything, liberal comment policies are usually more of an editorial decision than a commercial one (though obviously interrelated/overlapping at some level). Editorial's job should be to decide what content is interesting, important and attracts visitors. Commercial should be about finding ways to monetise a given site's existing visitors, and less about how to increase visitors. But funnily enough, some sites actually ban or heavily moderate comments on commercial grounds because advertisers don't usually like comments - they are too unpredictable and risky, could criticise their brand, be offensive, etc.
Anyway, we generally try to redact the personal and vicious (and we do have a "Report" button to suggest comments for moderation). Do you really want to give us greater discretion to unilaterally decide whether something is trolling, or unpleasant, or might offend some member of some institution somewhere?
On a personal note, yes, I admit that sometimes I find comments on LI hilarious. I'm happy that readers feel comfortable enough to crack jokes on LI. Sometimes comments are also infantile or thinly disguised attempts at trolling. So be it - life and law is too serious most of the time anyway.
Do I wish that commenters' discourse was more intellectual and high-minded sometimes? Of course, which editor wouldn't want that?
Should we therefore ban all non-intellectual and not high-minded content? I don't think so.
Articles should be the domain of a website's writers' and editors.
The comments and other interactive sections on websites should belong to the readers of a site. Hopefully mostly for the better, and not for worse.
Best wishes
Kian
P.S Nalsar is. Period.
NUJS lost in the Round of 32
ILS lost in the round of 64
No other indian team broke to the advanced rounds (and everyone participated)
Ishita from NALSAR got a speaker Hon Mention
Both Speakers from ILS got Hon. Mentions
NUJS got a respondent memo Hon. Mention.
enough said.
I think it's a pretty good result for India.
3 Honourable mentions for Best Individual Oralists in the General Rounds;1 honourable mention for Respondent Memorandum; 1 winner, 1 making it to the round of 32 and the other to the round of 64.
So when we win moots that time you dont want to talk about how it shows that NALSAR is one of the best law schools.
BUT, when something wrong happens everyone starts jumping in the air saying all the wrong things about NALSAR.
Guyz, cmon, I know "sour grapes". Its time to have some consistent standards. If you do raise debates about which is the best law school on articles which are cynical about NALSAR, then be man enough to face the reply.
Apart from NUJS and NALSAR now, the farthest that an Indian law college has reached in Vienna is ILS Pune, when they reached the finals a couple of years back, a feat that NLS Bangalore has not matched till date. Does that mean ILS is a better institution than NLS?
Without taking away the credit from the guys who won it one bit, is it fair to attribute their success to only their law school?
Look at NLS and NLU-J, and the consistency they've shown with mooting this year. NALSAR won Vienna, Oxford and BCI - big ticket wins, but isn't that around really 10 smart guys in a University with around 400 kids?
What happened to the rest of them? Whats NLS and NLU-J have shown is real consistency, which means more than a dozen kids out there know how to moot.
in that case any moot is won with a fair bit of chance. when nls doesn't break, that's a truckload of bad chance for them then. why cant you just congratulate the team that won and keep the debate aside. there have been 10 years since we started participating in vis. in ten competitions, any victory is super. but every year there've been different colleges who've done well. you cant judge a college in one victory. but you can in many such victories. nalsar has clearly done really well in that regard. good show. doesnt take away from nls that they also have a lot of wins to show. everyone's doing well. be happy. drink palinka. everyone who's high up on the mpl deserves it. right from nls to nujs, who ahvent had the best year this time. and just saying, its perfectly fair not to decide an mpl winner based on a big moot like jessup/vienna when the number of points that can be won in these moots are way more than a couple of first class national moots together.
Shotglass!
Best wishes
Kian
NALSAR Runners-up
NLIU Best Speaker
NLU Jodhpur Best Memorials
you are doing a wonderful job! Keep it up and please never give in to people who want to censor some mildly objectionable comments.
One must always keep in mind that the Question Of Freedom of Speech itself comes only when something spoken is objectionable to someone! Till then no one is going to talk or think about it neither discuss about censorship.
The answer to any objectionable speech is in fact more speech and not to stifle it altogether! So till the time a level playing filed is given to both the sides, i dont think there is any need to censor
threads most popular
thread most upvoted
comment newest
first oldest
first