Elite Law Practitioners Sebastian Windsor

OSCAR BENAVIDES is a partner at Rodrigo, Elias & Medrano Abogados and focuses his practice on transactions and regulatory work for mining projects. He has over 20 years of experience advising clients on project finance and mergers and acquisitions, as well as structuring, negotiating and executing exploration, joint venture and investment contracts in mining projects. He has always been recognized as a leading mining lawyer by international and local publications such as Legal500, Chambers & Partners, Latin Lawyer, among others; and is named to Who`s Who Legal`s «Global Elite Thought Leader 2020» list among the 24 most renowned mining practitioners in the world. Oscar is a member of the Board of Directors of the Peruvian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, holds a Master of Laws degree from the University of Denver, USA – Master of Natural Resources and Environmental Law, and was a member of the Jan M. and Marjorie G. Laitos Fellowship in Natural Resources. CARLOS VILHENA is a partner at the law firm Pinheiro Neto Advogados in Brasilia, Brazil, where he manages the firm`s mining and government relations. For many years, Mr. Vilhena has been named one of Brazil`s leading practitioners of mining law expertise by a number of publications, including the International Who`s Who of Mining Lawyers published by Who`s Who Legal, Latin Lawyer, Chambers Global and Legal 500. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Who`s Who Legal identified 407 mining lawyers around the world. Mr Vilhena was on the list of opinion leaders. He is the only Brazilian on the list. Chambers and Global 2017 ranked Mr.

Vilhena as the only Star Individual in the mining law market in Brazil. Mr. Vilhena is Senior Vice-Chair of the Mining Committee of the International Bar Association. He is a director of TriStar Gold Inc. Mr. Vilhena holds an LLM in Natural Resources Law from the Centre for Energy, Petroleum, and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee, Scotland, and an LLB from the Faculty of Law, University of Brasilia. The leadership of the U.S. OLC and WHC is dominated by political lawyers appointed by the president.27 The people who hold these positions usually have impeccable professional credentials, but political connections are also important, and the legal opinions of the OLC`s leading lawyers are generally the same as those of the incumbent president.28 These lawyers, in turn, are supported by graduates of elite law schools, for a period of two or three years. Although OCOL retains the services of several career lawyers who provide it with an element of institutional continuity, given the explicitly political orientation of the appointment, the direction of the OCOL and the WHC fluctuates regularly and changes with each change of administration. If we take the variables together, we can see that there is a lot of discretion in structuring executive legal advice. Its configuration involves – consciously or unintentionally, explicitly or implicitly – significant decisions and compromises on the part of the political executive.

Since the role of executive lawyers is not fixed, legal advice to the executive, as Renan puts it, is not an exogenous restriction to the executive, but simply binds it to the law.73 While in some configurations it may be a legalistic restriction on executive action, in others it may be a powerful tool to facilitate greater executive supremacy over law and policy-making. This raises the possibility that the executive legal council could be a constitutional mechanism that can be structured by elite political actors in the way that suits them best. In Section 4, we examine how decisions on these variables can alter the effect of executive counsel on constitutional policy. All these systems combine to varying degrees the political and technocratic aspects of legal advice with executives. All systems have an important political component in the appointment process, at least at their peak. However, even in Canada, where the adviser is a full-fledged minister, Kelly and Hennigar note that while the role of the attorney general has proven controversial in the past, all parties have stated that the attorney general should provide impartial and independent advice, and have only discussed the means by which this should be achieved.32 UK AG is also an explicitly political envoy, provided that they remain members of a political party, an elected representative and a minister of the government, but are independent of that government when it comes to making an impartial assessment of their policies against the requirements of the law. The open politics of the U.S. appointment system and ideological loyalty to the constitutional views of a sitting president are balanced by the elite professional credentials of those appointed to the OLC and WHC.

The Irish system claims to be the least political: Ireland`s Attorney General, who comes from a circle of elite practitioners, is seen as a technocratic and independent council. Loose political affiliations are generally not considered relevant. ELISABETH ELJURI is Chief Negotiator and Chief Legal Counsel at Sierra Oil and Gas, a private equity firm with assets in the Gulf of Mexico. She lives in Houston and Mexico City. Previously, she was Head of Latin America for global norton Rose Fulbright, where she focused on corporate and transactional work that included challenging high-end transactions for large energy companies, as well as international dispute resolution in the energy, projects and infrastructure sectors. Over the past two decades, she has regularly advised oil and gas producers and service companies involved in transactions in the region. She has worked in the energy sector in Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Argentina, Guyana and other Latin American countries. She has been particularly active in the energy sector in Mexico over the past 15 years.

The main transactions it has handled include acquisitions of hydrocarbon companies and production areas, upstream contract negotiations, a crude oil storage and ship loading project, as well as several of the world`s largest gas injection projects. She has extensive experience in profit and production sharing agreements, JOAs, JSBA, farms, gas licenses and upstream joint ventures, as well as related and large-scale projects in the middle and downstream. On the dispute side, she often acts as counsel in international arbitrations, including ICC and ICSID proceedings. She has also been mandated as an independent expert in international arbitration and judicial proceedings and has lectured and published extensively in the field of energy and resource investment litigation and investment contract law as well as in political risk management in these industries. Elisabeth is a former president of the appointing authority. She is actively involved in legal education, is co-chair and instructor of the international short courses on oil and gas that take place annually in Houston, and also offers courses on topics of interest to the energy community at the request of her client. Chambers ranks Elisabeth in Volume 1 for the entire Latin America region and Star Individual for Venezuela. For several years, Who`s Who in Oil and Gas has chosen Elisabeth as one of the top 10 energy practitioners in the world. Elisabeth holds a law degree from Católica University and an LLM from Harvard Law School. She is both a civil and customary lawyer (admitted to practice in New York and Venezuela).