From April 2026 I begin my first semester teaching (until July) at the University of Tokyo as the senior tenured Professor of Anglo-American Law, succeeding Professor Kichimoto Asaka (whom I met first as visiting professor to VUW in the mid-1990s) and working closely with Professor Masayuki Tamaruya in the same Chair (specialising in comparative trusts law). From 2027 onwards I plan to spend the autumn/winter semester teaching at UTokyo. The rest of each year I will continue teaching at the University of Sydney as Professor of Comparative and Transnational Business Law, including its offshore joint program in Japanese law. From that base I will remain a founding co-director of the Australian Network of Japanese Law (ANJeL).
I am honoured, excited and a little nervous to be joining such fine scholars and students at a leading university for legal studies in Asia. I will initially give lectures and a related tutorial (zemi) to both LLB and postgraduate Law School (“JD”) students regarding Anglo-American law, including an introduction to the wider common law world particularly across the Asia-Pacific region. I will also offer a course on Dispute Resolution in Common Law Asia (including Australia-NZ, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India and even the micro-state of Brunei). These will be offered in English for at least my first two years at uTokyo, but with some discussion and course materials also in Japanese.
I also look forward to continuing and expanding my comparative research in business law fields, especially international arbitration, foreign investment regulation, corporate governance, consumer and contract law. New writings this year include a national report on Australia for the IACL Berlin Conference session on Contractual Justice (with UMelbourne’s professor Jeannie Paterson), a chapter on Japanese law (with Ca’ Foscari professor Giorgio Colombo) for Elgar’s new Research Handbook on The Philosophical Foundations of Comparative Law (edited by Luca Siliquini Cinelli et al), and a chapter on corruption law and practice across Asia (with Keio Law School associate professor Nobumichi Teramura) in book on World Comparative Law coordinated by Prof Mindy Chen-Wishart through NUS (where I will again be a visiting professor over January 2027, to teach Japanese Law).
| Best wishes for a Happy New Year of the Horse! |
