Researchers' Activities

As part of the outreach efforts of the CIL’s TRILA (Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia) programme led by Professor Tony Anghie, Research Associate Eugenio Gomez-Chico met scholars in Hanoi to discuss possibilities of collaboration: Dr Toan Thang Nguyen, Head of the Comparative Law Department at Hanoi Law University; Dr Nguyen Thi Hong Yen, Head of the Public International Law Division at Hanoi Law University; Dr Hai Yen Trinh, Vice Dean of International Law at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam; and Mr Nguyen Huu Phu, Head of International Law and Treaties at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, and representative of the Vietnam Society of International Law.

The attendees discussed the importance of teaching and researching international law in their respective universities, the challenges faced by scholars in Vietnam, and their materials and techniques for teaching international law courses. Mr Gomez-Chico shared with them the progress of the TRILA programme, and invited their inputs on what would be most useful for local scholars regarding future CIL TRILA workshops in Vietnam.

Professor Antony Anghie (Head of International Law Teaching) and Research Associate Eugenio Gomez-Chico visited the Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia (PUC) on 29 May, as part of the outreach efforts of CIL’s Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia (TRILA) Programme. The visit was arranged by Mr Thol Theany, lecturer of international law at PUC, who participated in the TRILA Conference in 2018. Mr Thol and his colleague, Mr Phan Daro, shared with the CIL delegation their experience as teachers and researchers in Cambodian academia, in particular at PUC.

The CIL delegation met the university students from the master’s programme in international law and human rights and the bachelor’s programmes in law and international relations. The group engaged in a lively conversation on the students’ interest in international law and insights into the main international legal challenges facing Cambodia. The students overwhelmingly pointed to human rights as the area most relevant to their work, as many of them work in NGOs and government positions related to the topic.

Then Professor Anghie gave a lecture on the historical background of the current international legal order, emphasising the origins of human rights law and Asia’s role in the development of international law.

Research Consultant Emily Choo was a judge at the Vietnam CISG Pre-Moot. She was previously invited to judge the national rounds of both the Foreign Direct Investment Moot and the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Moot.

On 13 February 2019, Director Lucy Reed participated in the conference on ‘ISDS Reform: Mapping the Way Forward’ organised by the Asian Academy of International Law (AAIL) and the Hong Kong SAR Department of Justice. The welcoming speakers included Ms Teresa Cheng GBS SC JP, the Hong Kong SAR Secretary for Justice. The conference featured four panels—Investment Mediation, Appeal Mechanism for ISDS Awards, Third Party Funding in ISDS and Appointment of Arbitrators—and an Oxford Union style Debate on whether a Permanent Investment Court is a possible solution to ISDS problems. In an innovative approach, each panel had the benefit of a detailed discussion paper by a young private or government practitioner.

Professor Reed spoke on the Investment Mediation panel, on the topic of how to incentivise host governments and investors to use investor-State mediation. Also on the panel were (as pictured) Dr Anthony Neoh (AAIL Chairman), Professor Jack Coe from Pepperdine Law School and Paul Starr from King & Wood Mallesons. The discussion paper was from David Ng of the Hong Kong SAR Department of Justice.

 Rachel Tan Xi’en (CIL Practice Fellow) and Dana Chang (Wong Partnership) emerged champions at the Essex Court Chambers–Singapore Academy of Law (ECC-SAL) Mooting Competition 2019, after five rounds of competition. They won against the team from Wong Partnership in the final round held on 8 January 2019 at the Supreme Court of Singapore.

The ECC-SAL Moot is open to young lawyers from around Asia who have been qualified for no more than three years, to hone their advocacy skills. This year’s topic involved a dispute before the Singapore International Commercial Court concerning the question of the implication of terms in a contract and the validity of entire agreement clauses. The moot finals were judged by Justice Kannan Ramesh (Supreme Court of Singapore), David Foxton QC (Head of Essex Court Chambers) and Ng Jern-Fei QC (Essex Court Chambers).

Senior Research Fellow Youna Lyons was invited as a keynote speaker to the International Conference on Plastics in the Marine Environment (ICPME) 2018, hosted by the National University of Singapore on 5–7 December 2018. The programme of the conference provided a comprehensive discussion of issues related to the introduction of plastic in the marine environment from the perspectives of plastic chemists and biochemists, marine ecologists, oceanographers, human health, pollution monitoring, and research on marine ecological and socio-economic impacts. It also included a discussion of the international legal framework and possible paths to tackle the issue, including the development of a circular economy and other solutions for the future.

Ms Lyons presented the status and prospects of the international legal framework to manage marine plastics in Southeast Asia. The presentation identified the possible angles of an ocean law and policy approach to the issue of marine plastic pollution and provided an overview of the international legal framework. It emphasised relevant provisions from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which can be used to frame scientific research on marine plastic in order to inform the content of states’ obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment in this context. Ongoing working groups in different international and regional bodies and their respective importance were also highlighted. The presentation slides can be downloaded here.

Practice Fellow Rachel Tan Xi’en won the 2018 CIArb Competition on 21 November 2018. The essay competition is organised by the Singapore branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. The essay topic concerns a scenario on a culture clash between common and civil law procedures and the different approaches to taking evidence in international arbitration in the two legal systems. It invites entrants to submit a draft procedural order and an explanatory note to that order. The judging panel comprised Ms Judith Gill QC and Mr Duarte G Henriques.

This is the third time that a CIL researcher has won the CIArb Competition. In 2013 and 2015, Harpreet Kaur Dhillon and James Losari won the competition respectively.

At the 2018 American Society of International Law (ASIL) research forum, Research Associate Melissa Loja presented her paper ‘Recent Engagement with International Human Rights Norms by Courts in Southeast Asia: New Challenges to Human Rights Theories’.

She discussed that in recent cases involving arbitration and judicial immunity, Singapore courts relied on European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) norms; Malaysia’s Court of Appeal based two decisions on the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD), despite lack of legislative incorporation; the Philippine Supreme Court applied the Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances (CPPED), which the government had repeatedly refused to ratify; and Indonesia’s Constitutional Court invoked UN human rights instruments to justify the ex post facto prosecution of the past regime for human rights violations.

This engagement with international human rights norms has three distinctive features: 1) preference for ECHR norms over AHRD norms; 2) subversion of the ethos of human rights; and 3) lack of indication that the courts see themselves as agents of an exogenous regional or global normative order.

These distinctive features cannot be adequately explained by the main universalist, pluralist and institutionalist/neo-institutionalist paradigms about international human rights norms and their application by domestic courts. A re-examination of these paradigms is imperative.

CIL Director Lucy Reed delivered a keynote address on 15 September 2018 at the Conference in Commemoration of Professor David D Caron held at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley. At the time of his tragic, premature death in February 2018, Professor Caron was sitting as a judge on the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, an ad hoc judge in two ICJ cases, and an arbitrator in several complex international arbitrations. He was formerly Dean of the Dickson Poon School of Law at Kings College London and a chaired professor of law at Berkeley. Professors Reed and Caron, who were friends for some 35 years, had both served as President of the American Society of International Law and Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.

The conference, entitled ‘The Elegance of International Law’, featured high-level panels focussed on Professor Caron’s main areas of interest: international dispute resolution, legitimacy of international law and institutions, and the law of the sea and international environmental law. In her keynote—‘The David Caron Rule of X’—Professor Reed described and developed a lecture Professor Caron gave at the opening of the year in September 2017 at MIDS (Masters in International Dispute Resolution) at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. This was a work in progress, in which Professor Caron focussed on the need for international arbitrators to exercise personal discipline to limit their caseloads to the number of arbitrations they can responsibly handle—namely, a personal ‘X’ number of arbitrations—and thereby facilitate the process of more appointments for a more diverse pool of arbitrators.

The conference papers will be published by the Berkeley Journal of International Law and the Ecology Law Quarterly.

Research Fellow Amber Rose Maggio and Postdoctoral Fellow Marija Jovanovic presented papers at the International Law and Universality Conference in Manchester organised by the European Society of International Law.

Dr Maggio’s paper was entitled ‘Marine Environmental Protection, Regional Cooperation and Universality: The Particular View from Southeast Asia’. The paper explored the preference for universality in environmental standard setting with regard to marine environmental protection, how regionalism and regional cooperation may be replacing universalism in the implementation of measures for the protection and preservation of the marine environment, and what the implications are for states in Southeast Asia. The paper discussed the legal framework and possible move away from universality, regional cooperation mechanisms, the particular view from Southeast Asia with a focus on the South China Sea, and future prospects.

Dr Jovanovic presented a paper entitled ‘Europe, Trade Deals and Forced and Child Labour in Developing States: Towards a More Principled Approach’. She explored the extraterritorial reach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in cases of forced and worst forms of child labour when these practices occur within the supply chains of companies domiciled in European states. Exposing an unprincipled gap in the current ECHR jurisprudence, the paper argued that the absence of any state responsibility pertaining to activities of business enterprises domiciled in their territory, especially in countries with well-known and severe governance gaps, undermines the universal reach of the absolute prohibition of slavery and forced labour and effectively encourages and facilitates such practices outside the European espace juridique. The paper then presented reasons for and ways of framing states’ positive obligations in these circumstances that are consistent with the principles of interpretation of the ECHR and with the growing international recognition of such duties by international organisations and established precedents in some domestic jurisdictions.

Research Fellow Dafina Atanasova attended the Trade Law Forum Incheon 2018, which gathered regional perspectives on ISDS reform from Asia-Pacific states in relation to the ongoing work of UNCITRAL on the topic. Her participation is part of the broader engagement of the Centre for International Law with the topic of appellate mechanisms and standing tribunals for investor-state disputes, and more specifically with the work of UNCITRAL Working Group III.

Research Assistant JR Robert Real presented his paper entitled ‘National courts collectively creating regional norms in ASEAN’ at the Philippine Society of International Law Inaugural National Conference. Held from 6 to 7 September 2018 in Quezon City, the Philippines, the conference was organised by the Philippine Society of International Law and the University of the Philippines. Mr Real’s paper explored the role of Southeast Asian judiciaries in developing regional environmental norms amid the lack of a regional court.

Research Associate Rachel Tan coached the NUS team that emerged runner-up at the Asian Law Students Association (ALSA) Investment Law Moot held in Yangon from 24 to 27 August 2018. At the keenly contested final, two NUS teams battled through four intense rounds simulating an investor-state dispute before the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The runner-up team comprises second-year NUS law students: Ong Kye Jing, Wileen Saw, Timothy James Chong, and Isabella Tan.

CIL researchers Tara Davenport, Millicent McCreath and Christine Sim recently participated in the International Law Association Biennial Conference in Sydney. CIL organised a panel on ‘The Inherent Changeability of the Due Diligence Principle: Challenges for the Development of International Environmental Law’, which was chaired by Professor Rosemary Rayfuse.

Ms Tara Davenport spoke on this panel on ‘The Inherently Changeable Due Diligence Principle and the Protection of the Marine Environment’. Other speakers on this panel were Justice Nicola Pain of the Land and Environment Court of NSW, Dr Aline Jaeckel from Macquarie University and Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger of the University of Waterloo/ University of Cambridge.

Ms Millicent McCreath was a speaker on the panel on ‘The Tide of Change: New Responses to Environmental Challenges in the Pacific Ocean’, organised by the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law. The topic of her presentation was ‘PSIDS Request for an ITLOS Advisory Opinion on the Content of UNCLOS Climate Change Obligations’.

Ms Christine Sim spoke on a panel on ‘Investment Disputes and Challenging Boundary Issues over Land and Sea’. Her topic was ‘Investment Disputes in Areas of Uncertain Sea Boundaries: Ghana/Cote d’Ivoire’.  

Research Fellow Dr Dafina Atanasova and Research Associate and Practice Fellow Elsa Sardinha participated in SIEL Biennial Conference 2018 International Economic Law in Unsettling Times, American University Washington College of Law, Washington DC, 12–14 July 2018.

Dr Atanasova presented her paper ‘Applicable Law Provisions in Investment Treaties: An Empirical Take,’ as part of a panel dedicated to the general and theoretical aspects of international investment law.

Ms Sardinha presented her paper ‘Requiem for A Deal, or the End of American Influence in the Investment Chapters of Asia-Relevant FTAs?’, co-authored with NUS Assistant Professor Vincent-Joël Proulx, as part of a trade and investment panel dedicated to China and Asia. This paper had won the Best Paper Award at the Asian Society of International Law Japan Chapter’s Annual Global Conference in Tokyo on 1 July 2018.

CIL Researchers Ms Emily Choo and Mr Eugenio Gomez-Chico were invited to judge the inaugural Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot (FDI Moot)—Vietnam National Round (7–8 July 2018). The moot was hosted by the Ho Chi Minh University of Law and organised by the Vietnam Society of International Law. The national round is part of the FDI Moot organised by the Center for International Legal Studies, which aims to help future lawyers attain a practical understanding of investment law issues, and offers a unique forum for academics and practitioners from around to world to discuss developments and assess emerging talents. The winning teams were from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh University of Law.

CIL Director Lucy Reed spoke at the ‘Forum on the Belt and Road Legal Cooperation: Rules and Coordination’ in Beijing on 2–3 July 2018. The conference was co-hosted at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the China Law Society, with the Chinese Foreign Minister HE Wang Yi giving the keynote speech. The legal focus—the so-called ‘soft connectivity’ of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—was underscored by the identity of the co-sponsors: Chinese Society of International Law, China University of Political Science and Law, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing Law Society, and Department of Justice of the Government of Hong Kong SAR.

Professor Reed spoke on arbitration and mediation of investor-state disputes, on the panel ‘The BRI and International Dispute Settlement’. The other main panels addressed ‘The BRI and International Rule of Law’, ‘Rules, Treaties and Laws Supporting the BRI’, and ‘BRI Legal Exchange and Cooperation’. The conference had over 350 invited participants from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and South America.

Research Assistant JR Robert Real presented his paper ‘For the Common Good—The Philippine Supreme Court’s Divergent Approach to Human Dignity’ at the Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue between Law and Culture Conference. Held from 2 to 3 July 2018 in Taipei, the conference was organised by the Academia Sinica Institutum Iurisprudentiae.

Mr Real’s paper explores the Philippine Supreme Court’s approach to interpreting the concept of human dignity, which seems to vary depending on whether parties invoke individual rights or collective rights.

Research Assistant JR Robert Real presented his paper ‘Judicial Transplantation as a Backdoor to Environmental Normative Integration in ASEAN’ at the 2018 ICON-S Annual Conference on Identity, Security, Democracy: Challenges for Public Law. Held from 25 to 27 June 2018 in Hong Kong, the conference was organised by the International Society of Public Law and the University of Hong Kong.

Mr Real’s paper explored the role of Southeast Asian judiciaries in developing regional environmental norms amid the general sensitivity of the region to international law intruding on domestic sovereignty.

CIL successfully organised its inaugural Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia (TRILA) conference on 21–22 June 2018 at the NUS Faculty of Law. Bringing together 144 participants from 34 countries, the TRILA conference provided a platform for junior and senior researchers and faculty members to meet and collaborate on teaching and researching international law in Asia.

The TRILA Conference opened with a rousing keynote address by Judge Raul C Pangalangan of the International Criminal Court, exploring in-depth the role of international law in Asia. Its first day, focussed on teaching, investigated the methods of imparting knowledge and inspiring passion in Asian students of international law, the challenges faced by Asian international law lecturers, and the areas of international law most pertinent to international practice. The second day, focussed on research, involved expositions on the role of history, theory and identity in Asian international law scholarship, the production of quality research in international law, and the obstacles to research faced by Asian scholars. The event closed with a thought-provoking and hopeful prospectus on international law teaching and research in Asia.

CIL’s TRILA conference reflects the commitment of NUS Faculty of Law in promoting international law scholarship in Asia, continuing the work of the 1964 Round Table on the Teaching of International Law and Relations, and the TRILA Conference of 2001. Very fittingly, Professor Tommy Koh (Chairman of CIL’s Governing Board) and Professor S Jayakumar (Chairman of CIL’s International Advisory Panel), both pioneers in this project, were present at the opening of the conference. The conference was preceded by a one-day Junior Faculty Workshop, which gave young scholars the valuable opportunity to have their work critiqued by a panel of senior faculty, consisting of leading voices in international law.

CIL Director Professor Lucy Reed spoke at the international conference on ‘The Rise of International Commercial Courts’ at Qatar University on 13 May 2018. Professor Reed spoke about the Singapore International Commercial Court on a panel discussing comparative features of international commercial courts, including the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre. The keynote speaker for the conference was Justice Ramesh Kannan of the Singapore High Court.

CIL Director Professor Lucy Reed spoke on the opening plenary panel of the bi-annual Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) in Sydney, Australia. The panel theme was ‘Law-Making in International Arbitration: What Legitimacy Challenges Lie Ahead?’, and Professor Reed spoke on arbitration tribunals as lawmakers. Professor Stephan Schill of the University of Amsterdam moderated the panel, and the other panellists were Singapore Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, ICC Court of Arbitration President Alexis Moure, and Professor Thomas Schultz of Kings College London. All the papers will be published in the official ICCA Congress Series (Wolters Kluwer).

Professor Reed also spoke at the follow-on AMINZ-ICCA International Arbitration Day in Queenstown, New Zealand, where the theme was ‘Making Arbitration Work in a Changing World: A Pacific View’. She was the commentator on Daniel Kaldermis’s keynote lecture entitled ‘International Arbitration in a Brave New World’.

Research Associate Ms Melissa Loja presented her research paper at the New Voices Panel at the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington DC. Ms Loja’s paper was about international agreements between non-state actors. Her paper discussed international agreements that national petroleum corporations such as Petronas, PetroVietnam, PetroleumBrunei and China National Offshore Oil Corporations enter into to manage disputes over petroleum resources that are shared by states across maritime zones and boundaries.

Professor Laurence Helfer, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, remarked that her paper makes a concrete contribution to international law, because it presents primary data that have not been made known before, and it enables a granular examination of actual practices in international law.

On 1 February 2018, CIL Director Professor Lucy Reed spoke at a programme at the Supreme Court entitled ‘The Singapore International Commercial Court’s potential to advance the rule of law’. The conference was sponsored by the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC), the Singapore International Law Association and Freshfields (Singapore). The speakers included two judges on the SICC, Justice Quentin Lowe and Sir Vivian Ramsey, as well as Mr Francis Xavier SC of Rajah & Tann, and Mr Nicholas Lingard and Mr Robert Kirkness of Freshfields. Professor Reed spoke on what characteristics make an international commercial court truly international.

CIL Director Professor Lucy Reed served as faculty at the 2017 Summer Institute of the ASEAN Human Rights Resource Centre (HRRC) held in Bali on 29–31 January 2018 (the volcano risk having postponed the original summer date). The chairman of the conference was HE Ambassador Ong Keng Yong, who is the chairman of HRRC and a member of the CIL Board of Directors. The theme of the conference was ‘Trade, Investment, and the Rule of Law in ASEAN’. Professor Reed spoke on ‘The Rule of Law and Dispute Resolution in ASEAN’ and moderated a panel on ‘Rights Dimensions in Trade and Investment in the ASEAN Community’.

The HRRC is a non-profit academic centre headquartered at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, in partnership with 11 other academic institutions in 7 out of 10 ASEAN member states. Its mission is to support a rights-based approach to ASEAN integration through research, training and education, and its core thematic areas are rule of law, business and human rights, and the rights of vulnerable populations. The Summer Institute is the HRRC’s signature annual event, organised in collaboration with the WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University and Udayana University.