Written by: Prof Sothi Rachagan (Vice-Chancellor, Nilal University, Malaysia)
[Prof Rachagan, doyen of consumer law and policy studies in Southeast Asia, has kindly provided the following review of my conference volume co-edited with Chula Uni Prof Sakda Thanitcul, published by Winyuchon (Bangkok) in 2016 in English plus Thai translation, with a version of the introductory chapter available here.]
Continue reading “Guest blog: review of “ASEAN product safety law””
Here are some papers to be presented and discussed at a symposium on Monday 15 July at Hong Kong University, as part of a joint research project over 2019 with the University of Sydney Law School.
The central administrations of the University of Hong Kong and the University of Sydney have provided A$17,000 each for this joint research project over 2019, centred around two conferences at HKU on Monday 15 July and at USydney on Monday 18 November. The lead co-investigators are respectively A/Prof Shahla Ali and Prof Luke Nottage. Below we set out the project’s Aims, Significance and Outcomes. Further updates are expected on this Blog.
[See here for the first half of this book launch / review.]
[These are notes prepared for my launch of this new book by a friend and former colleague, on Thursday 5 July 2018 during the biennial Asian Studies Association of Australia. The second half is posted on 1 August 2018.]
I am honoured and humbled – in three ways – to launch this latest book by my former colleague at USydney’s Japanese Studies Department, Dr Yasuko Claremont, which examines “Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation”.
I am humbled as it is the first time to launch a book … which makes me feel a little old!
But I am also humbled because Yasuko puts me to shame for her productivity; since retiring in 2015, she has also produced two other books. This evidence of “life after retirement” makes me feel young again!
I am further humbled because this book makes me realize how much I still need to learn about history and society in Japan (and indeed in Australia – the book’s major comparative reference point, along with Korea and China / Taiwan). Although I research and teach Japanese law “in context”, I tend to delve more into the law than the context. Yet both are deeply intertwined, and law in fact crops up in several chapters throughout this book.
[Parts I and II of this book are reviewed in earlier postings.]
Asia’s Changing International Investment Regime: Sustainability, Regionalization and Arbitration, Julien Chaisse, Tomoko Ishikawa and Sufian Jusoh (eds),
Springer, 2017, xii + 260pp, ISBN 978-981-10-588, 120 Euros
Reviewed by: Luke Nottage and Ana Ubilava
[Part I and Part III of this book are reviewed in earlier and subsequent postings]
Asia’s Changing International Investment Regime: Sustainability, Regionalization and Arbitration, Julien Chaisse, Tomoko Ishikawa and Sufian Jusoh (eds),
Springer, 2017, xii + 260pp, ISBN 978-981-10-588, 120 Euros
Reviewed by: Luke Nottage and Ana Ubilava
Asia’s Changing International Investment Regime: Sustainability, Regionalization and Arbitration, Julien Chaisse, Tomoko Ishikawa and Sufian Jusoh (eds),
Springer, 2017, xii + 260pp, ISBN 978-981-10-588, 120 Euros
Reviewed by: Luke Nottage and Ana Ubilava (University of Sydney Law School PhD candidate)
This 14-chapter book published in late 2017 provides a succinct and quite comprehensive overview, as well as some detailed analysis, of key developments and themes in the rapidly evolving field of Asia-Pacific international investment treaties. It is particularly useful for readers in the antipodes, given for example Australia’s emphasis on concluding bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and especially more recently Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with investment chapters, with counterparties in the Asia-Pacific region. Although the book’s title refers to “Asia”, several chapters refer to foreign direct investment (FDI) and treaties extending around the Pacific Rim, as well as some developments in Central Asia (a very different sub-region to South or especially East Asia).
The editors’ short Introduction, comprising helpful chapter summaries, explains that the book derived from the recent “rapid evolution of the international investment regime in the Asia-Pacific region”. It aims “to help predict the future regulatory framework in the region, and how the regional trends affect the development of global rules for foreign investment” (p1). Part I sets the scene by outlining “regional trends in an evolving global landscape”, including a growing concern about rebalancing FDI and treaties to promote sustainable patterns. Part II focuses on the “regionalization of investment law and policy ”, especially key intra-regional treaties concluded recently or under negotiation. Part III ends by asking whether we will see a trend “towards a greater practice of investment arbitration in the Asia-Pacific?”. The backdrop is that treaties and FDI flows are triggering somewhat belated, but nonetheless sometimes controversial, increases in both inbound and outbound investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) claims involving Asian states or investors.
https://brill.com/abstract/title/36129Guest blog written by: Nobumichi Teramura (UNSW PhD in Law candidate)
Ongoing dramatic geopolitical transitions in the world have inevitably impacted on the international business environment of the Asia-Pacific region. This requires Australia and other countries in the region to re-examine their legal infrastructure for transnational business disputes. Convergence and divergence of legal systems of competing and sometimes cooperating states in the Asia-Pacific require the Australian government and other stakeholders to address unprecedented legal complexities in private to private, private to public, and public to public commercial dispute resolution.
On 19 April 2018, the Sydney Centre for International Law (SCIL) at the University of Sydney Law School organised a post-ICCA symposium: “International Commercial Dispute Resolution for the 21st Century: Australian Perspectives”. The symposium, the second recently with the University of Western Australia (UWA) Law School and also supported by Transnational Dispute Management (TDM), brought together leading experts in international arbitration, investment law and international business law from all over the world. They examined broad and perhaps increasingly overlapping fields such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in a changing legal and political environment, cross-border litigation in the Asian region, other international commercial dispute resolution mechanisms (arbitration and mediation), and inter-state dispute settlement.
[Update of 22 August 2018: the JSCOT Report No 181 recommending CPTPP ratification is now available. It refers to this Submission, my oral evidence given at hearings in Sydney (transcribed here), and further statistical information jointly with PhD student Ana Ubilava (incorporated also into an article for the Sept 2018 issue of the Intl Arb L Rev).]
The Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed in February 2016 by Australia, Japan, the US and 9 other Asia-Pacific countries, but the new Trump Administration withdrew signature in January 2017, so the remaining 11 re-signed a variant (TPP11 or CPTPP) in March 2018. Inquiries into ratification are now being conducted by the the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT, where the Government always had a majority of members, so will almost certainly recommend ratification) and the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in the Senate (where the Government lacks a majority overall). The Inquiry reports do not bind the Government anyway, so the big question remains: will the opposition Labour Party subsequently vote with the Government to enact tariff reductions consistently with this treaty, to allow the Government then to ratify the treaty so it can come into force?
A particular stumbling block will remain the TPP11’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, given as an option additional to inter-state arbitration for investors directly to enforce substantive commitments offered by host states to protect foreign investment, given that the Labour Party’s policy remains opposed to including ISDS in treaties. Despite that policy position, going back to the the Gillard Government Trade Policy Statement in 2011 (in force until Labour lost power in 2013), the Labour Opposition nonetheless voted pragmatically with the Government to allow FTAs containing ISDS to come into force with Korea and China.
Below is my Submission to both Parliamentary Committees, focusing on the investment chapter and supporting ratification of the TPP11. It is based in part on my latest paper with A/Prof Amokura Kawharu focusing on recent ISDS cases and investment treaties (re)negotiated by Australia, and New Zealand where a new Labour Government has also renounced ISDS for future treaties, but pragmatically agreed to rather minimal changes to ISDS and the investment chapter overall in TPP11. The footnoted original versions of the Submission, available by the Committee websites, refer to some of my other recent writings concluding a 4-year ARC cross-institutional research project on international investment dispute management. One is a 21-chapter book on ‘International Investment Treaties and Arbitration Across Asia‘, launched by former Chief Justice Robert French on Thursday 13 April as part of a SCIL-supported symposium on international commercial dispute resolution, including Australian perspectives.
Continue reading “The TPP is Back: Submission to Australian Parliamentary Inquiries”
