Report on visit to the International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI)

A number of Executive Council members of the CMI visited Malta for the Colloquium on the 29th of February and  Professor David Attard, the Director of the International Maritime Law Institute therefore extended an invitation to the Executive Council Members to visit IMLI on the 1st of March and meet with the students who have just graduated this June.

This was a perfect opportunity for the President of CMI, Stuart Hetherington and Vice President Giorgio Berlingieri together with Exco members Luc Grellet and Ann Fenech to visit IMLI and interact with the students.

After meeting al the students, Professor David Attard  spoke of and explained  the very strong ties and links between the CMI and IMLI stating that the CMI provide IMLI with a number of expert lecturers as well as with  sponsoring the CMI prize for the best dissertation.   Stuart Hetherington on his part stated what a pleasure it was for him to be at IMLI personally and to be able to interact with the students who come from so many different parts of the world. He explained the ethos and purpose of the CMI and given the recent Colloquium explained how important it was for each and every student to  convince  its government of the benefits of an international convention on the international recognition of judicial sales and to encourage their governments to endorse the Proposal that would be made to UNCITRAL. He also referred to the long history of interaction between CMI and IMLI particularly in the persons of Patrick Griggs, Bent Nielsen, Professor Francis Reynolds and more recently Andrew Taylor, and in the past Bill Birch Reynardson, Frank Wiswall and Francesco Berlingieri as guest lecturers.

Stuart Hetherington also congratulated IMLI and the students on the work that they were doing to improve the awareness of the importance to the uniformity of maritime law that states ratify conventions.

Ann Fenech