Public policy and politics – Page 2 – Japanese Law and the Asia-Pacific

Asia-Pacific Online Legal Education Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Update: video recording on Youtube – click here.]

This 1 February 2022 noon-1.30pm (AEDT) webinar at Sydney Law School discusses how online (university or other) legal education interacts with each jurisdiction’s legal profession, university system, and ICT infrastructure, as well as how online legal education has developed both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, across several Asia-Pacific jurisdictions: Australia, Japan, Canada, Brunei/Malaysia/Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong. It draws on draft National Reports for an International Academy of Comparative Law conference hosted over 23-28 October 2022 in Asuncion (Paraguay), comparing over 20 jurisdictions worldwide, for a volume to be published by Intersentia co-edited by Professors Luke Nottage and Makoto Ibusuki.

Find out more about the project, including links to several draft reports.

Speakers:

Professor Luke Nottage (also co-chair, University of Sydney Law School)
Professor Makoto Ibusuki (also co-chair, Seijo University)
Dean Trish Mundy (University of Wollongong)
Professor William van Caenagem (Bond University)
Assistant Prof Nobumichi Teramura (University of Brunei)
Assoc Professor Salim Farrar (University of Sydney Law School)
Professor Rostam Neuwirth (University of Macau)
Professor Adrien Habermacher (University of Moncton, Canada)
Wilson Lui and Assoc Prof Alice Lee (University of Hong Kong)
Professor Kenichi Yoneda (Kagoshima University, Japan)

Registration – gratis:

Please click here to register online .

Please click here to register in-person. (There are limited places available to attend this event in-person.)

This event is hosted by the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at Sydney Law School, Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL) and the Transnational Law and Policy Centre at the University of Wollongong.

Guest Blog: Pandemic Pressure Points –Economics Governance and Society in Japan

Written by: Joseph Black (CAPLUS law student Intern, 2021) [with updates from Prof Luke Nottage]

On 25 August 2021, the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL), the Australia-Japan Society of New South Wales (AJS), the Australia-Japan Research Centre (AJRC), the Japan Studies Association of Australia (JSAA) and the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law (CAPLUS) delivered a timely seminar entitled “Pandemic Pressure Points: Economics, Governance and Society in Japan”. The webinar [recorded here] was moderated by Dr Rowena Ward, JSAA Treasurer and Senior Lecturer in Japanese studies at the University of Wollongong. Panellists were Professor Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi, Associate Professor at Ritsumeikan University’s College of Global Liberal Arts (and Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific); ANJeL co-director Professor Luke Nottage from the University of Sydney Law School; and Professor Shiro Armstrong, AJRC director and Associate Professor of economics at the Australian National University (also co-editor of the East Asia Forum blog). Closing remarks were given by Masahiko Kiya, Consul-General of Japan in Sydney, and also Patron of AJS and on ANJeL’s Advisory Board. We had the privilege to explore diverse and topical themes: the impact of the pandemic on Japanese governance and its legal system, the impact of the pandemic on the Japanese economy, how the pandemic has disadvantaged vulnerable groups, and, among other themes, the emergence and potential of digitalisation in Japan. [Comparing developments in Japan with China, Indonesia and Malaysia, as part of an ANJeL/CAPLUS/CAPI (UVic) webinar around Prof Victor Ramraj’s edited book on COVID-19 in Asia, see the 28 May 2021 webinar recording here.]

Dr Ward commenced the substantive part of the seminar by sharing graphs reflecting vaccination and case numbers in Japan. While the number of cases has substantially increased since the middle of June 2021, deaths have recently come down compared to the 7-day average (~7 compared to 32), and have been kept very low by international standards even during earlier waves. Turning to age and sex statistics, males, especially in their 80s, are generally at a higher risk of death than females, and recently, there have been virtually no women in their 30s who have died from COVID. Around 40% of Japanese have received two doses. This number is somewhat higher than in Australia, which has also ramped up vaccinations over the last two months.

Following the statistics, Professor Kobayashi presented and dissected the economic disparity between women and men in the Japanese labour market amid the pandemic and the general social picture. Professor Kobayashi noted that women have generally had less income than men (~251.0 to 338.0); have been subject to precarious, part-time jobs at a higher rate than men; and have experienced more unemployment than men. Women with child/ren had the highest unemployment rate (11.5% compared to 4.2% for men and 9.1% for women) according to May 2020 statistics. As Professor Armstrong later suggested, the actual rate of unemployment figure may be unknown for all women (and men), as the unemployed may not have started looking for employment and are therefore not incorporated in unemployment statistics. Professor Kobayashi noted that there has been an increasing number of telephone consultations for domestic violence (skyrocketing from around 9,000 in January 2020 to over 17,000 between March and April 2020). Furthermore, women have found themselves tasked with ever-more domestic responsibilities, and would like men to participate more in the household than pre-pandemic (21% of tasks to about a quarter).

Professor Armstrong turned to the Japanese economy, and discussed the immediate impacts of the pandemic on the economy. He noted that, while the economy did not shrink this quarter, we may miss the ‘Olympic bounce’ that historically accompanies the Olympics (Tokyo was in a state of emergency and we did not see the type of tourism that follows the Olympics). Nonregular workers, women, young people, the elderly, and the vulnerable in Japanese society have particularly experienced financial hardship. Unlike Australia, Japan has provided limited stimuli, and it has taken considerable time for Japanese to receive checks and masks.

Later, Professor Nottage discussed Japanese law before and amid the pandemic. Japan has been comparatively unusual in pandemic management [but rather like eg Sweden] by not imposing criminal or other legal sanctions on individuals, but instead relying mainly on community norms and self-responsibility to limit movement and COVID-19 spread. One question is whether this provides another example of what Professor John Haley identified as a persistent pattern of “authority without power” in Japanese legal history, meaning authorities don’t have or want to invoke legal powers. An illustration is the practice of informal “administrative guidance” to influence business activity, quite common until the 1980s.

However, Professor Nottage observed that with the COVID-19 pandemic, the government did have constitutional power to extend emergency powers to restrict business activity (which it eventually legislated for, but still in a soft manner compared to Australia and other countries) and even to restrict movement by citizens. The government seems to have decided not to introduce harder lockdown measures because legally they still have to be proportionate, and Japanese citizens and firms generally act responsibly anyway. Another reason is that compensation should be paid if constraints are legislated, and the Japanese government already has high levels of national debt. The response has arguably struck quite a good balance, if we focus on the very low death rates (as the government seems to have done from the outset of the pandemic) combined with benefits from keeping the economy largely open. As one Tokyo-based law professor remarked, a visitor nowadays wouldn’t really know that Japan was going through a global pandemic, except for people wearing masks in crowded situations, somewhat fewer commuters as more work or have university studies from home, and some organisations restricting numbers and hours of operation.

The recent reliance mainly on self- and community responsibility does sit somewhat uneasily with the reforms implemented after an all-of-government report on justice system reform, aimed at making the law more part of everyday life in Japan. Those changes to civil and criminal justice, as well as the expansion of legal education and professionals, were aimed at allowing businesses more flexibility instead of ex ante regulation by public authorities, but improved processes to provide ex post remedies for misbehaviour through more functional courts or alternative dispute resolution systems. But in public health, especially in crises like a pandemic, prevention is usually better than cure. There are downsides, too, in moving socio-economic ordering in an overly legalistic direction.

Professor Nottage also mentioned some areas where the pandemic has had significant impact on Japan’s legal system, drawing on a series of YouTube interviews with various experts in Japanese law, funded through the Japan Foundation Sydney for ANJeL and the JSAA. Japan’s contract and consumer law systems seems to be responding comparatively well, but the pandemic challenges have forced the courts to bring forward plans to digitalise their still mostly paper-based procedures. By contrast, the rapid worldwide shift to remote hearings in international arbitration and mediation creates opportunities for newly established ADR institutions in Japan, but also significant competition.

The webinar also had a variety of questions and answers during the question segment, in the Sydney Law School podcasts recording. For further developments and perspectives, the AJRC is holding a Japan Update 2021 online seminar on 8 September 2021 over 10:00AM-3:00PM AEST.

***

Joseph Black is a Juris Doctor student at the University of Sydney and anticipates commencing his Masters of International Law program from February 2022. Joseph is an intern with the CAPLUS and is interested in Japanese Law, Chinese Law, Indonesian Law, East Asian Studies, and other fields.

Australasian Consumer Law Roundtable: 1 December @ USydney

Sydney Law School, with support especially from its Ross Parsons Centre, is pleased to host this year’s Roundtable, in hybrid format on 1 December 2021, to discuss recent or emerging research and topics in consumer law and policy. In an informal interactive format, for the last fifteen years the Roundtables invite together experts in consumer law mainly from universities across Australia and New Zealand, but sometimes more widely including from Japan and other parts of Asia or even further afield, as well as some consumer regulators or peak NGO representatives. The event is open to other staff and HDR students from USydney, as the host, and any consumer law academics from Australian, NZ or Asian universities are also welcome to seek permission to attend by emailing luke.nottage@sydney.edu.au

Short presentations for discussion at this year’s Roundtable include the following [not necessarily in the order listed below]. Several involved recent or forthcoming publications that may be made available to the wider public already or after the event.

Samuel Becher (VUW)	“Dark Contracts” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3911528)	Firms design non-transparent consumer contracts. This article documents the multiple non-transparent contractual mechanisms and practices that firms employ in their consumer contracts. Specifically, it delineates how firms use non-transparent tools in almost every possible contractual juncture: from the contract’s nature, scope, and language to contract performance, dispute resolution, change, and termination. The article first documents this non-transparency. Thereafter, it argues that the sum of these non-transparent components is greater than its parts. The aggregated impact of these non-transparency practices undermines fundamental contract law notions and leaves consumers disinformed and disempowered. While firms have a profit incentive to employ non-transparent contracts, bounded ethicality makes it even more unlikely that firms fully realize the harmful consequences of their contracts. Against this backdrop, the article dubs these highly non-transparent consumer contracts “Dark Contracts.” To better tackle the problem of Dark Contracts, the article proposes introducing transparency-related instruments to the law of consumer contracts to tackle this thorny challenge. It further argues that policymakers should design such concepts to (1) allow better scrutiny over firms’ practices and (2) empower consumers to make better-informed decisions.
Jason Harris (Sydney Law School)	“Liability for ACL Breaches Within Corporate Groups and Franchise Systems”	An emerging issue in corporate law concerns contribution orders for underpaid workers whereby the court can deem several entities to be within a ‘contribution order group’ and make another company liable for the unpaid entitlements where they have received the benefit of the work. There are broader contribution order regimes (not just for employee entitlements) in NZ, Ireland and Germany. I wonder whether ACL compensation orders had given rise to problems with corporate groups (i.e. assetless shell companies misleading, while the parent company benefits) and whether accessorial liability under ACL s236 is sufficient to address this? In other words, could contribution orders within corporate groups (loosely defined to include franchise systems) benefit consumers and are they worth looking at? I’ve done a bit of work within corporate law looking at veil piercing doctrines, and there is at least 1 TPA case on making a parent co liable for misleading conduct that was argued on veil piercing grounds (which I argued should have been decided on accessorial liability under the TPA instead).
Jeanne Huang (Sydney Law School)	“The Latest Generation of SEZs: Consumer-Oriented Unilateralism in China’s E-commerce Trade” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3875223)	WTO multilateralism is driven by manufacturers. However, in China, Cross-border E-commerce Retail Import (‘CERI’) has spurred a new, consumer-oriented trade unilateralism. CERI prospers within China’s National Cross-Border E-commerce Pilot Cities, which are Special Economic Zones aimed at using unilateral trade liberalization to meet consumers’ growing demands for high-quality foreign products. CERI enhances consumer benefits beyond reducing customer formalities and tax rates and lowering product prices. It re-conceptualizes consumer protection by treating consumers as diverse individuals rather than as a homothetic group. It also empowers consumers by making them ‘importers’ to minimize behind-the-border trade barriers. CERI warrants a rethinking of WTO multilateralism from its initial focus on corporations and capital owners to a revised focus on consumers.
Mary Keyes and Therese Wilson (Griffith U)	“Protecting Consumers in International Disputes: Arbitration and Jurisdiction Agreements in Australian Law”	The globalisation of markets for consumer goods and services means consumers regularly purchase goods and services from international suppliers. These agreements typically stipulate that consumers must litigate or arbitrate, if a dispute arises, in the suppliers’ home jurisdiction. As in other common law jurisdictions, in Australia there are no rules that deal specifically with the effect of arbitration and jurisdiction clauses in consumer contracts; their effect falls to be determined under the general principles that have been developed in the context of commercial transactions. This article investigates the use of arbitration and jurisdiction agreements involving Australian consumers through an empirical study and evaluates the Australian laws which regulate these agreements. It demonstrates that, while aspects of the current legal regime may have the capacity to protect consumers, such protections will not necessarily be applied. We review a number of recent cases that demonstrate this problem and suggest that changes to the Australian law are required to more explicitly protect consumers.
Benjamin Hayward (Monash Business School)	“‘Free Your Mind’: Using ‘The Matrix’ to Explain the Interaction Between the Australian Consumer Law and the CISG”	For those of a certain age, the conflict between the characters Neo and Agent Smith depicted in ‘The Matrix’ trilogy of movies is well-known and is one of the great rivalries of cinema history. What is not well-understood in the Australian legal context, including amongst lawyers who would be familiar with this Neo/Smith conflict, is the way in which the Australian Consumer Law interacts with the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (the ‘CISG’). Though the CISG excludes consumer transactions from its scope, the fact that it defines those excluded transactions differently to the way in which the Australian Consumer Law defines consumer supplies provides scope for the CISG to displace the otherwise-mandatory ACL consumer guarantees. Analogy with ‘The Matrix’ trilogy provides an excellent basis for explaining this interaction, and ensuring that its implications are understood by the legal profession. Young lawyers and law students are today provided more means than ever to acquaint themselves with the CISG, and to understand its place in Australian law. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a knowledge gap still exists, however, amongst older lawyers – including those who may have grown up watching Neo and Smith’s conflict play out on the silver screen. This presentation is directed at helping address this knowledge gap, and in turns, seeks to contribute to a better professional understanding of the interaction under analysis.
Victoria Stace (VUW)	“Bills, bills, bills. What recent research has revealed about debt collection practices in New Zealand and how the law might respond” (Powerpoints here)	Recent research conducted by Victoria University of Wellington has given insight into the experiences of debtors who find themselves facing debt collection. Financial mentors across the country, who see clients daily in unmanageable debt situations, were asked questions around the conduct of debt collectors, the addition of fees and interest, and use of attachment orders. Particular issue emerged such as the use of intimidation, and use of attachment orders to benefits to collect old debts. This paper discusses the findings of that research and considers how the law can assist to improve standards of behaviour.
Vivien Chen (Monash Business School) with Lucinda O’Brien, Ian Ramsay and Paul Ali	“An Impending “Avalanche”: Debt Collection and Consumer Harm After COVID-19” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3917247)	Debt collection activity is expected to rise significantly in 2021, as financial hardship becomes more prevalent due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer advocates have warned of an impending “avalanche in debt collection” and have called for better enforcement of laws designed to protect consumers from harassment as well as unfair, misleading and deceptive conduct by debt collectors. Women’s groups have also pointed to a rise in economic abuse, and resulting indebtedness, in the context of a general escalation in family violence during the pandemic. This article examines the legal framework governing the Australian debt collection industry. Drawing on recent case law and a series of focus groups conducted by the authors, it outlines law reform and enforcement measures that would better protect consumers from harmful debt collection practices. These include specific measures to address the financial, social and psychological impacts of family violence and economic abuse
Sagi Peari (UWA)	“Consumer Protection Law, Judge Made Law and the Concept of Coherence: Can They Co-Exist?”	Consumer protection law intervenes into the traditional doctrines, principles and concepts of the backbone categories of private law: contract and tort. For instance, consumer law challenges the longstanding limited scope of “unconscionability” and the “implied terms” doctrines of contract law. Within the tort law category, consumer law reconceptualises the fundamental elements of the law of negligence. While significant parts of private law categories remain to be subject to the domain of the judge-made law, the consumer laws operate through legislation. The paper tackles the following two interrelated aspects of the interplay between consumer law legislation and the traditional private law categories: (1) the impact of consumer law legislation on the judge made law; (2) the relation of this legislation to a key philosophical concept of private law- “coherence”.
Catherine Niven (QUT)	“Proposals to Modernise the EU’s General Product Safety Directive: A Blueprint for Australian Reform” [pre-recording of presentation here]	There has been little progress on Australian product safety reforms since the 2019 public consultation on the regulatory impact assessment of introducing a General Safety Provision (GSP). Since this time, the global COVID pandemic has accelerated growth in online shopping, exacerbating the key weakness of the Australian regime: its lack of a GSP. The European Commission (EC) has identified that the growth of e-commerce has decreased the effectiveness of its General Product Safety Directive due to its lack of specificity to online selling and applicability to new e-commerce actors in the product supply chain. In June 2021, the EC commenced public consultation on significant reform proposals aimed at modernising its framework. These include dedicated reforms for online marketplaces with obligations focussed on their place in the product supply chain, specific provisions related to online sales, widening the mandatory incident reporting obligation and using new technologies to conduct product safety recalls. There appears to be significant momentum behind these reforms to be delivered under the New Consumer Agenda of 2020. Could the developments in Europe be an opportunity for Australia to build on the last decade of reform discussion by incorporating key European reform proposals to its product safety regime to elevate the level of consumer protection and create a fairer playing field for Australian businesses?
Geraint Howells (Galway) [Keynote]	“Consumer Product Safety and Online Platform Liability” (Powerpoints here)	Platforms play an increasingly important role in e-commerce. This paper highlights different approaches to making them responsible and potentially liable for dangerous goods. Voluntary, regulatory and civil liability are all potential options being explored in Australia, the EU and US. This paper hopes to prompt discussion about the appropriate way forward.

Jeannie Paterson and Yvette Maker (UMelbourne)	“The Role of Consumer Protection Law in Responding to the Risks of ‘Intelligent’ Consumer Products”	Intelligent consumer products like voice-activated digital assistants potentially offer tremendous benefits to many consumers. They are labour-saving devices that create opportunities to free consumers from mundane tasks and assist them to make more informed and rational decisions. They have also been promoted for their potential to facilitate the activities of daily living for older people and people with disability. Yet while intelligent consumer products may offer convenience and enhanced accessibility, they also carry risks of harm to consumers in relation to violation of privacy, bias and discrimination and interference with decision-making autonomy. This presentation will explore the role of consumer protection law in responding to these risks, with a particular focus on issues of accessibility and equity. It will also consider the role of codes of AI ethics, and the complementary contribution of other fields of law and policy, in addressing matters on which consumer protection law has less to say.
Nicola Howell (QUT) and Jeannie Paterson (Melbourne)	“Remedies for emotional harm in Australian consumer credit law”	Emotional harm is a highly foreseeable outcome of financial stress – whether this arises from borrowing more than is manageable (unsuitable credit), difficulties in repaying credit arising from unforeseen life contingencies (hardship) or not being able to access credit (financial exclusion). Together with co-regulation (AFCA) and self-regulation (eg, Banking Code of Practice), the National Consumer Credit Protection Act now provides an extensive regulatory framework that should help to prevent or reduce financial stress for Australian credit consumers, however, the extent to which this framework can facilitate remedies for emotional harm (and not just financial harm) has not yet been subject to academic consideration. In this paper, we seek to address this gap by examining the current and potential scope for remedies for emotional harm arising from credit law contraventions. We begin by considering the emotional harms which may arise from over indebtedness. We then identify the key statutory provisions specifically aimed at alleviating the effects of unsuitable credit and financial hardship, and the associated remedies for breach. We argue that given the purpose of these regimes it should be open to courts to award remedies aimed at responding to emotional harm. We consider the role of regulators and AFCA in remedial relief responding to emotional harm. We scrutinise the value to consumers of such responses before turning the final part to consider remedies for failure by lenders to engage with the hardship regime and the gaps in this regime in providing real obligations and remedies/redress for breach.
Zofia Bednarz (UNSW)	“Using Consumers’ Data to Determine the Target Market for Financial Products: The Difficult Marriage between Financial Law and Data Protection”	Digitalisation has had a profound impact on financial services, with increasingly precise data profiling of consumers being one of the drivers of profit for the industry in the digital age. However, data profiling may also result in consumer harm that could range from data breaches to unfair pricing, digital manipulation, discrimination, and exclusion of vulnerable consumers. This can be particularly problematic in financial services context due to the consequences it has on consumers’ access to financial products. In this paper I focus on the requirement to determine the target market for financial products and its interplay with privacy and data protection rules. I argue that financial product governance rules requiring target market determination for products will further incentivise data profiling of consumers by financial services providers. I analyse ways in which financial firms may collect and use consumers’ data for the purpose of constructing the target market and confirming that clients who receive offers of products are within this target market. There is a real risk that financial law and data protection frameworks have failed to strike a balance between (surprisingly) competing interests of consumer protection regarding the provision of appropriate financial products and the use of consumers’ data in digital profiling. This means that the new rules on financial products governance may backfire, resulting in unintended consumer harms.
Kate Tokeley (VUW)	“The Power of the ‘Internet of Things’ to Mislead and Manipulate Consumers: A Regulatory Challenge” (https://ndlsjet.com/the-power-of-the-internet-of-things-to-mislead-and-manipulate-consumers-a-regulatory-challenge/)	The “Internet of Things” revolution is on its way, and with it comes an unprecedented risk of unregulated misleading marketing, and a dramatic increase in the power of personalized manipulative marketing. IoT is a term that refers to a growing network of internet-connected physical “smart” objects accumulating in our homes and cities. These include “smart” versions of traditional objects such as refrigerators, thermostats, watches, toys, light bulbs, cars, and Alexa-style digital assistants. The corporations who develop IoT are able to utilize a far greater depth of data than is possible from merely tracking our web browsing in regular online environments. They will be able to constantly collect and share real-time data from inbuilt IoT sensors and trackers such as microphones, cameras, GPS sensors, and temperature sensors. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to analyze this raw data in order to gain insights into consumer preferences and behavior, and deliver individualized marketing messages via our IoT devices. The persuasiveness of these marketing messages is likely to be further enhanced if future IoT household assistants are developed to have human-like mannerisms and appearances. This article explains how current laws that prohibit businesses from misleading and deceiving consumers will struggle to operate effectively in an IoT marketing landscape, where questions of who can be held liable, who should be held liable, what communication should be prohibited, and how to ensure enforcement, all become more complicated. It argues that current legal frameworks will need to be re-formulated in order to maintain the ability to prevent deceptive and misleading communication. It also tackles the wider question of whether legal frameworks should be re-formulated so as to add in protections against excessively manipulative marketing. The article points to several potential ways to achieve such re-formulations. Redesigning legal regimes to effectively protect consumers in a new IoT marketing landscape will no doubt be a challenge. The starting point is to confront the fact that there are genuinely difficult problems for which existing regulatory toolkits are ill-equipped to handle.

Kayleen Manwaring (UNSW)	“Enforcement-in-a-box: Computational Implementation of Private Rights”	The rise in use of smart devices and cyber-physical systems has also seen a rise in attempts at technological implementation of methods of enforcement of private rights (such as contract or copyright) by suppliers of services and software supporting those devices and systems. Many of these devices and systems are hybrids of physical object, software, hardware, data and services, and often are capable of being remotely disabled or modified by the software or service provider. This capacity for remote disablement or modification has the potential to be a potent tool for service and software suppliers to regulate an individual’s use of smart devices and cyber-physical systems. These methods may be used to enforce penalties against alleged breaches of private rights without recourse to a judicial or other dispute resolution process. This presentation will report on a work-in-progress project intended to examine these issues. Brownsword has warned that ‘full-scale technological management’ by regulators of prohibited conduct (eg a regulator technologically limiting the speed of a car or disabling it) is the ‘thick end of the wedge’ in relation to ‘destabilising’ the rule of law and degrading the importance of human ‘agency and autonomy’. Pasquale has additionally cautioned that even in circumstances where automated enforcement is efficient, ‘critically important publicly legal values risk being lost or marginalised when dispute settlement is automated.’ This project will examine if this conceptual analysis can be extended to business entities utilising technological management to directly enforce private rights, discussing research questions along the following lines: (1) What harms to individuals, and consequently what detrimental effects on public legal values (such as protection of consumers from abuse of corporate power), might arise from technological implementation in smart devices of private law enforcement methods, such as enforcement of debts, contractual conditions or intellectual property rights? (2) To what extent do existing laws in Australia regulate these harms and detrimental effects? (3) Do legal problems arise in relation to these existing laws? That is, are any of these laws under- or over-inclusive or uncertain? Are there any new harms or detrimental effects arising that are completely unregulated by existing law? (4) How can these harms and detrimental effects be mitigated from a legal (and potentially technological) point of view?
May Fong Cheong (ACU)	“Remedies for Purchasers of Forged Art: The Potential in Section 18 ACL on Misleading Conduct”	Art is acquired for its aesthetic value, for the beauty of that art piece as communicated by the artist. However, art is also increasingly acquired for the authorship of the art – buyers desiring not only art, but the work of a recognised “artist”. The authorship value of well-known artists has seen art pieces fetching skyrocketing prices transforming art as objects of aesthetic expression to art as an investment tool. The ‘commodification’ and ‘financialisation’ of art provide opportunities and economic incentives to produce counterfeits and forgeries posing unseen risk to purchasers of art. Both the art enthusiast and the art investor who pays a price for a work of art are entitled to enjoy, and obtain, that which they were led to believe – that the work is authored by the artist who painted that landscape, that object on the framed canvas piece he or she had paid for. They are entitled to the goods as described, to the attribution given of the art piece and to statements warranting the authorship and authenticity of the art. However, art authentication is a complex process: at the intrinsic level to search the truth to determine its cultural and historic value and at a practical level to protect the economic value of art and the functioning of the art market. The purchaser’s challenge to acquire authentic art pieces is further compounded by the intricacies and anomalies in the art industry; one concerning aspect is the questionable practices of auction houses. As a result, art purchasers find themselves in the precarious position of not knowing if the art pieces hanging in their walls are forged. This paper first considers two legal avenues that a disgruntled art purchaser might pursue: (i) implied conditions of goods corresponding to description in the Sale of Goods legislation; and (ii) consumer guarantees of acceptable quality, and of goods as described, under the Consumer Guarantee Law. It then considers how certificates of authenticity of authorship have been decided under the Uniform Commercial Code and under the New York Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. Finally, the paper investigates recourse to art buyers under the misleading conduct provision in section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law and argues that despite some limitations, this avenue offers the best potential for success for purchasers of forged art.
Luke Nottage (USydney), Jeannie Paterson (UMelbourne) & Erin Turner (Choice)	“Post-Pandemic Rights to Repair and Other Remedies Under the Australian Consumer Law” (PDF of Powerpoints here)	Recent survey evidence from Australia’s peak consumer NGO, for a current inquiry by the Productivity Commission into rights to repair, confirms anecdotal accounts of considerable problems faced by individuals in obtaining Australian Consumer Law remedies for suppliers’ violations of mandatory consumer guarantees (eg of “acceptable quality”, including reasonable durability). Over the last decade, suppliers may have learned not to expressly disclaim ACL obligations (risking enforcement action and fines), but also that consumers need to prove a product defect, and may be particularly prone therefore not to provide remedies since the lockdowns and other impediments to accessing justice since 2020. Our presentation looks at the extent and types of problems experienced, analyses the current ACL regime, and proposes various substantive and procedural reforms to generate better consumer redress and therefore supplier behaviour.

Guest Blog: COVID-19 in Asia – China, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia in Focus

Written by: Hao Yang Joshua Mok, student intern at the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS)

On 28 May 2021, the University of Victoria’s Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), together with the University of Sydney’s Centre for Asian and Pacific Law (CAPLUS) and the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL), hosted an online webinar celebrating the publication of ‘Covid-19 in Asia – Law and Policy Context’. A recording of the webinar may be accessed here.

Edited by Prof. Victor V. Ramraj and published by Oxford University Press, the book is a collected volume on Covid-19 law and policy issues in Asia. It draws upon the work of sixty-one authors from seventeen jurisdictions and aims to capture the initial responses of governments in response to the pandemic and highlight likely enduring legal and policy challenges.

The online webinar drew on four chapters of the book, focusing on China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan’s responses to the pandemic.

The China chapter was presented by A/Prof. Feng Xu from the University of Victoria and discussed by A/Prof. Jeanne Huang from the University of Sydney.
The Indonesia chapter was presented by Dr. Nadirsyah Hosen from Monash University and discussed by Prof. Simon Butt from the University of Sydney.
The Malaysia chapter was presented by Dr. Azmil Tayeb from Universiti Sains Malaysia.
The Japan chapter was presented by Prof. Shigenori Matsui from the University of British Columbia. Prof. Luke Nottage from the University of Sydney briefly discussed both the Malaysia and Japan chapters.

A/Prof. Xu began her presentation with a reflection of China’s largely successful Covid-19 response. She suggested that we must contextualize China’s experience as an interrelationship between coercion and consent: China’s success in imposing and enforcing strict lockdown and quarantine measures required the acceptance and consent of individuals to those conditions. Turning to the book chapter itself, A/Prof. Xu suggested that China’s emergency response involved the mass mobilization of political, economic, and social resources. While effective, such measures came at a huge cost to individual rights. A/Prof. Xu concluded that the most immediate challenge for China will be the roll-out of its vaccination program.

A/Prof. Huang echoed this theme of consent and emphasized the limited scope of the right to privacy and personal information in China. While this allowed health administrators to access personal data when managing the pandemic, it reflects the tension between coercion and consent. Drawing on her area of focus, A/Prof. Huang provided some brief remarks on civil litigation against China arising out of the pandemic – raising issues of jurisdiction and service – as well as on China’s response to foreign criticism, exemplified by its trade dispute with Australia.

Dr. Hosen suggested that the Jokowi administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic had been too little, too late. Despite growing cases in South East Asia in early January, the government did not impose lockdown measures but rather further opened up the country. While the government eventually escalated its measures, the pandemic was already in full swing. Dr. Hosen argued that there were four barriers that contributed to the slow response and ineffectiveness of governmental measures: first, the unhealthy relationship between the Indonesian Medical Association and the Minister of Health Affairs; second, the political rivalry between President Jokowi’s administration and the current governor of Jakarta; third, the incompetence of the Jokowi cabinet; finally, the position of conservative religious groups in rejecting the request not to organize mass prayers.

In Prof. Butt’s discussion, he suggested that issues of governance, politicking, and religion are not new issues for Indonesia. Rather, they have been brought to sharp relief by the pandemic. Moreover, putting aside the government’s shortcomings, the size and geography of Indonesia presents significant difficulty. Prof. Butt concluded that looking forward, the biggest difficulty for Indonesia would be to obtain and administer vaccines in the face of those persistent issues.

Dr. Tayeb discussed issue of improvised pandemic policy and democratic regression in Malaysia. In the lead up to the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia was experiencing a volatile political environment which eventually resulted in a new coalition coming into power in late February 2020. Shortly thereafter, Covid-19 emerged, and the government responded by implementing strict lockdown measures. While those measures were initially successful, the country experienced a turning point. Under the backdrop of a continued power struggle, state by-elections were occurring without much restriction. This led to another wave of Covid-19 cases. Dr. Tayeb suggested that throughout the pandemic, the government’s response evinced incoherency. Moreover, the government has been using the pandemic to avoid the convening of parliament, undermining notions of accountability and transparency.

Prof. Matsui suggested that Japan was ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic and its eventual response was slow and insufficient. The difficulty was with Japan’s fragmented and restrictive infectious disease legal infrastructure. While the government eventually revised its statute and declared a state of emergency, only soft measures were imposed, because of initial legal constraints and the effectiveness of social norms. Fortunately, infection rates and death toll remained low in Japan throughout 2020. Now, however, Japan has experienced a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and there is a growing fear that this will worsen with the Tokyo Olympics. The biggest issue ahead for Japan is with its vaccination program, especially given concerns about vaccine hesitancy among the public.

Prof. Nottage went on to compare Malaysia and Japan’s responses during the Covid-19 pandemic. He suggested that in terms of balancing public health, civil liberties, and economic activity, Japan appeared to be quite successful. Prof. Nottage queried the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy this year, especially given the communitarian norms evident last year, as vaccination programs constitute the next complex phase in pandemic management in Australia, across Asia and world-wide.

Japanese Studies (& Law): JSAA conference focused on “Sustainability, Longevity and Mobility”

[Updated 13 September 2021] ANJeL has coordinated two Panels related to Japanese law, as below, for the upcoming biannual conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia. Due to the ongoing pandemic the 2021 conference will be a virtual event delivered via Zoom. The conference theme is ‘Sustainability, Longevity and Mobility’ and details can be found at https://languages-cultures.uq.edu.au/event/session/5776. The dates for the conference remain September 28th to October 1st 2021. Due to the nature of virtual delivery the format for the conference will be quite different from past years and registration costs will be reduced. There will be a virtual postgraduate workshop held during the conference as well.

Stream 3.6 (Friday 1 October 1-2.30pm): “Japanese Law and Methodological Diversity”

The three presentations engage with diverse methodological perspectives that can be adopted to analyse Japanese law and society. Luke Nottage and Craig Freedman uncover three key tenets of the post-War Chicago School of economics, adapted by J Mark Ramseyer in analysing an increasingly broad swathe of fields, beyond the economic sphere to include recently and controversially the history of “comfort women”. They warn against letting this or any ideology skew logical arguments or factual determinations. Ayako Harada instead applies a methodology incorporating cultural and institutional perspectives to examine child custody dispute resolution in Japan. Leon Wolff ends by exploring the explanatory power of emotions and affect in explaining reconfiguration of legal relations in Japan.

“Revisiting Ramseyer: The Chicago School of Law and Economics Comes to Japan” (Prof Luke Nottage, co-authored with retired A/Prof Craig Freedman)

Mark Ramseyer has been a leading force in bringing to bear the methods of Law and Economics to an increasingly ambitious analysis of the Japanese legal and economic systems. He has deliberately assumed an iconoclastic position in debunking a number of widely-held beliefs about Japan. More recently he has engendered a bitter degree of controversy by idiosyncratically analysing Korean “comfort women” and residents in Tokyo before and during World War II. In this paper we examine Ramseyer’s long contribution to Japanese studies and conclude that he has too frequently let ideological objectives, paralleling three key tenets of the Chicago School of economics, interfere with what should be cool-headed analysis. While asking many of the right questions, prompting often helpful responses and further research, he unfortunately has let a priori assumptions determine his answers. Ramseyer has proven reluctant to review his assessments or implications, largely dismissing contrary evidence.

Luke Nottage, Professor of Comparative and Transnational Business Law, University of Sydney Law School, Co-Director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL). Luke specialises in arbitration, contract law, consumer product safety law and corporate governance, with a particular interest in Japan and the Asia-Pacific, and has produced 18 books and hundreds of articles and chapters. He is also Associate Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney, Managing Director of Japanese Law Links Pty Ltd and Special Counsel with Williams Trade Law.

“Child Custody Dispute Resolution in Japan: A Cultural and Institutional Perspective” (Prof Ayako Harada)

This paper describes the background and the current situation of parental child custody disputes in Japan. It discusses the possibility of joint-custody legislation and its potential difficulties in effectively managing such disputes in Japanese cultural and institutional context.

Ayako Harada, Professor at Nagoya University Graduate School of Law’s Department of the Combined Graduate Program in Law and Political Science. Prof Harada specialises in legal sociology, history and theory, having graduated from Kyoto University and worked at Waseda University before joining Nagoya University. A major field of research and writing is family law dispute resolution.

“Japanese Law: Once More with Feeling” (A/Prof Leon Wolff)

Emotions enrich our lives. They define our passions and interests; they give colour to our life events; and, as e-motions, they move us to make choices and decisions. The psychological and neurological sciences have long dismissed the false dichotomy between the unruly horse of the emotions and the calm rider of the intellect. And although sociologists and cultural critics have drawn inspiration from these scientific traditions to develop feeling rules and affect theory to explain transformations in social relations, legal sociologists have kept their feelings in check — at least in their scholarly accounts. This paper explores the explanatory power of emotions and affect in explaining reconfiguration of legal relations in Japan. It considers the different conceptualisations of feelings, their corporeal and psychic dimensions, how they manifest intra- and inter-subjectively, and the methodological challenges involved in accessing, operationalising and analysing emotions to make better ‘sense’ of Japanese law and society. This paper argues that emotions, as forces that drive movement, offer richer possibilities for explaining socio-legal change than current, more static material accounts based on national character, institutional design, politics or rational choice models.

Leon Wolff, previously Associate Professor of Law at the Queensland University of Technology and PhD candidate at the Griffith Asia Institute, was founding co-director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL). Specialising in Japanese law and society, Leon is currently working on a project on the role of emotions and affect on legal change and justice in Japan.

Discussant: Associate Professor Trevor Ryan teaches Legal Theory, Constitutional Law and other classes at Canberra Law School, where he is Program Director of the Juris Doctor. Trevor’s main research interests are elder law, disability, and legal education, with a comparative law interest in Japan. Trevor has published on a range of topics including dementia, guardianship and private law; the right to housing; and the role of stakeholders in shaping legal education.

2. Stream 3.1 Weds 29 Sept 12.30-2pm: “The Shadow of Japanese Law – How Sports Elites and the Marginalised Poor Skirt the Law”

This panel has two presentations exploring the surprising ways corruption and crime function in Japan despite the criminal law. The presentations focus on the two extremes of Japanese society — the elite (professional sumo athletes) and the poor (elderly prisoners who now occupy a significant proportion of the incarcerated). Both presentations explore the surprising ways the elite and the marginalised ignore, invoke and side-step the law to achieve socio-economic goals.

“Subverting the Prison: Stigma, Strategy and Japan’s Aging Inmates” (Carol Lawson, University of Tokyo Law Faculty)

Prison populations are aging across all industrialised jurisdictions. However, in Japan, the growth in older prison admissions has long been outstripping the rate of aging in society as a whole. Nearly 38% of admissions were aged 50 or more in 2018, and there is strong evidence that some older Japanese are leveraging the prison system as de facto aged care. This paper explores the confluence of social disintegration and poverty that have contributed to Japan’s grey crime wave. It then examines the role of legal consciousness in this sociolegal phenomenon. Specifically, the paper analyses data collected from 1500 prisoners in 2016 using Valerie Braithwaite’s ‘motivational postures’ heuristic to show how marginalised older Japanese with compliant attitudes to authority have repeatedly embraced the stigmatising criminal identity to receive law’s protection. Finally, it demonstrates how this deft subversion of prisons to meet individual care needs has driven previously inconceivable legal and social change, rewriting the rule book on criminal justice regulation in Japan – without reliance on rights discourse.

Carol Lawson commenced as Associate Professor of (Anglo-American) Law at the University of Tokyo Law Faculty in September 2021. Before that she was the Minter Ellison Research Associate at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law and a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University. She works on regulation and global governance with a focus on criminal justice regulation and closed environments. Her approach is through a comparative sociolegal lens, using mixed methods to carry out empirical research. She is completing a study on the nature and impact of civil prison oversight in Japan and Australia, and planning a project on regulating closed environments in the aged care sector. An insight common to both studies is the importance of developing a granular understanding of regulatees’ compliance postures before attempting a regulatory intervention. She teaches courses in Japanese and Anglo-American law, and coaches in the Tokyo Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition. She also serves on the Japan Law Translation Council and as an expert adviser to the Japanese legal translation community, including on plain legal language.

“Integrity and corruption in sport: Lessons from Japan and match-fixing in sumo” (Matt Nichol, CQU [presenter*] with Elisa Solomon and Keiji Kawai

Professional sumo in Japan provides a different perspective on corruption in sport due to the long-standing and until recently accepted tradition of match-fixing in makuuchi and jûryô, the two highest divisions of wrestling known as sekitori. As sports gambling is generally illegal under Japan’s Criminal Code, match-fixing in sumo is not related to gambling. Instead fixing is largely the result of the promotion rules, where rikishi (‘wrestlers’) with a losing record in one of the six annual tournaments face demotion in rank and division, and with it, the loss of status and income of competing in sekitori. Evidence surfaced in the 1990s and 2000s of match-fixing involving wrestlers with above expected winning records when facing a losing record in the last days of a tournament. A police investigation into illegal gambling in baseball in 2011 led to evidence of fixing involving a number of rikishi and resulted in an investigation by the Japan Sumo Association that confirmed the first official cases of match-fixing in sumo. This chapter will examine the cultural, institutional and sumo specific factors that encourage fixing and how trust was restored with the public, fans and sponsors after the 2011 fixing scandal

* Matt Nichol is a Lecturer in Law at the College of Business at Central Queensland University (Melbourne Campus, Spencer Street Melbourne VIC 3000). His research focuses on labour mobility, labour regulation and wages in professional baseball in the United States and Japan. Matt has also researched free agency and corporate governance in the Australian Football League. Matt’s research utilises regulatory theory, approaches to labour and the principle that labour is not a commodity to examine the regulation of labour in professional sport. In 2019, Matt’s book Globalization, Sports Law and Labour Mobility: The Case of Professional Baseball in the United States and Japan was published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Elisa Solomon is an Asia-Paciic Employment Relations Specialist with Bristol Myers Squibb, and a Research Assistant with Monash University, Australia. Elisa is a lawyer with experience researching and advising on labour laws and regulations in the Asia-Pacific, and holds a Master of Laws. Having worked in both the public and the private sector in Japan, Elisa is experienced in conducting research on Japanese laws and policies. Elisa has conducted research on laws surrounding workers’ protections in Japan, participation of women in Parliament, and the assessment of directors’ liability in Australia and Japan. She has previously worked for the International Labour Organization in Thailand on a regional project analysing countries’ compliance with the Bali Declaration.

Keiji Kawai is a Professor of Sport Law in the Department of Policy Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. His book, The Legal Status of Professional League Players (2003), was awarded the Okinaga Prize by the Labor Research Center. He served as Visiting Researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 2007 to 2009. Keiji was the General Secretary of the Japan Sports Law Association from 2017 to 2019 and is also on the arbitrator panel at the Japan Sports Arbitration Agency. He was an executive board member of the Nippon Basketball League from 2013 to 2015. He is currently conducting comparative studies funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science on sports accidents and compensation.

Asian Legal Conversations: COVID-19 (Japan)

ANJeL Program Convenor (Judges-in-Residence) A/Prof Stacey Steele and UMelbourne colleagues have produced or assembled webinar recordings, interview transcripts and other resources comparing how Japanese and society has managed the COVID-19 pandemic, available here.

These resources include:

Quarantine, Masks and Dis/ease: Social Discourses of COVID-19 in Japan and Korea

Sunyoung Oh, Claire Maree, Jun Ohashi and Patrick Murphy
Originally posted on the Melbourne Asia Review, 5 November 2020 [43-minute recorded webinar]

An Analysis of Japanese Responses to COVID-19 from an Administrative Law Perspective

Shusaku Kitajima, 8 October 2020 [article, building on interview with Stacey Steele (26 May, transcript here)]

Responses to COVID-19 and Japanese Criminal Justice

Reegan Grayson-Morison and Stacey Steele, 24 June 2020 [interview transcript]

Judicial Responses to COVID-19: Japanese and Victorian Courts’ Use of Technology

Reegan Grayson-Morison and Stacey Steele, 23 June 2020 [interview transcript]

Embracing Asian Law Centre Communities and Opportunities: Alumni Gathering of Japanese Judicial Visitors

Stacey Steele, 18 June 2020 [short article]

Regionalism Rises in Japan to Confront COVID-19

Dan Rosen, 21 May 2020 [short article]

Japan’s Soft State of Emergency: Social Pressure Instead of Legal Penalty

Akiko Ejima
Co-posted in collaboration with COVID-DEM, which curates and publishes analysis of COVID-19’s impact on democracy worldwide, 13 May 2020 [short article]

Not a Sporting Chance: COVID-19 Dashes Japan’s Olympic Economic Hopes

Asialink
Originally posted on Asialink Insights, 11 May 2020 [short article]

Improving the Effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety System: Australian Law Reform in Asia-Pacific Context

[This is the original draft for a posting that was significantly revised and published under a different title on 29 October 2020 by The Conversatio n, prompting also interviews/podcasts with ABC National Radio “Life Matters” on 5 November 202 0 and “Counterpoint” on 14 December 2020. This work is related to my ongoing ARC-funded joint research project DP170103136 and a JCP article published earlier this year (manuscript on SSRN.com here). A version will be presented and then discussed in the 1 December 2020 webinar for the International Association of Consumer Law (pre-recording available here) and the Consumer Law Roundtable hosted this year by QUT on 3 December. (Last updated: 1 December 2020.)]

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened our awareness of safety risks, but also the socio-economic costs needed to reduce them. Public health interventions can also collide with human rights and constitutional principles, and undermine state capacity. Australia’s policy-makers and regulators are still facing many difficult choices to manage this new disease.

In consumer law, they and peak NGOs like Choice have also been busy grappling with a range of pandemic-related issues. These range from hand sanitiser quality through to refunds for airfares and other travel services. Nonetheless, hopefully policy-makers can now get back to some unfinished business, as we learn to live with COVID-19 while praying for a vaccine or cure.

In October 2019 the Treasury released its Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) entitled “Improving the Effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety System”. This was part of a suite of reform initiatives agreed after the 2016-7 review of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), which re-harmonised consumer rights and regulatory powers nationally from 2011.

The review’s Final Report and now the RIS considered adding to the ACL an EU-style “general safety provision”. European countries (such as the UK in 1987, then the EU from 1992), as well as Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia (1999), Canada (2010) and Singapore (2011, partially), have introduced such a GSP. It was discussed in several earlier government inquiries, notably by the Productivity Commission in 2006 and 2008, but the Commission concluded that the ACL should try some other measures first. A GSP would require manufacturers and importers to ensure that they only supply safe consumer products, otherwise risk public law sanctions from regulators.

Choice found that many Australians wrongly assume we already have this requirement. Yet the ACL currently only allows mandatory safety standards to be set pro-actively for specific types of general consumer products (currently around 40, many involving higher-risk children’s products). These specific standards take a long time to develop, usually only after serious injuries or deaths particularly within Australia. A recent example is renewed efforts to introduce a mandatory standard around button batteries, after a third child died in July and the AFL withdrew thousands of bracelets in October 2020. Regulators can also issue bans (around 20) for products found unsafe, but this is an even more reactive response.

Also only after harm arises, manufacturers can be indirectly incentivised to supply safe products by harmed consumers potentially bringing strict liability compensation claims. But such ACL product liability claims, requiring individuals to prove a “safety defect”, are becoming proportionately fewer. Even large class action law firms prefer focusing resources on more straightforward and large-scale claims by shareholders against listed companies for misleading conduct.

The Treasury’s draft RIS invited public comment on various reform options and three perceived problems with Australia’s consumer product safety system. One problem was misunderstanding about the current ACL regime. A second was its largely reactive nature, impacting on regulatory interventions and supplier behaviour. A third was considerable harm from unsafe consumer products. The ACCC identified 780 deaths and 52000 injuries annually. It also estimated at least a $4.5 billion annual economic cost, assuming around a $200,000 “value of a statistical life year” for premature deaths and disability. There were also costs of $0.5 billion in direct hospital costs for governments, and further costs associated with minor injuries and consequential property loss. (These seem conservative estimates, especially as the US consumer safety regulator recently US$1 trillion costs annually for that country – although the methodology and assumptions for that estimate are not set out in the UNCTAD report.)

My own Submission and a related peer-reviewed article added comparative empirical data in support of a GSP. First, the OECD Global Recalls portal shows that Australia reported higher per capita voluntary recalls over 2017-9 than Korea, the UK, Japan and the USA. Australia reported a rate similar to Canada, at least on the OECD data, but Canada’s legislation has a more expansive duty on suppliers to report product accidents to regulators compared to that added to the ACL. A large proportion of our recalls involve child products, mostly from China.

[Table 1: Comparing Australia’s Recalls (2017-9)]

Secondly, annual recalls have been growing in Australia, as pointed out by Dr Catherine Niven et al (co-researchers for our ARC-funded project comparing child product safety) and various submissions by Choice. The uptick is noticeable from around 2012, tracking burgeoning e-commerce and more importers dealing with more manufacturers abroad. We can anticipate more more consumer product safety problems due to further online sales during the pandemic, and the ACCC issued warnings in April 2020. So far this year, though, annual recalls are down, according to the around 240 by end-October (excluding automobile recalls), compared to around 400 over all of 2019. This drop is likely to be temporary and caused by: (a) pandemic-related recession causing less consumer spending, (b) less time and energy for consumers to complain about unsafe products, (c) businesses struggling with finances and staff so not checking products and conducting or reporting recalls as much, and (d) less regulatory capacity to sweep bricks-and-mortar shops for unsafe products or monitor online platforms (except perhaps the larger ones).

[Figure 1: Australia’s Recalls (1998-2019)]

Perhaps for similar reasons, the Canadian government website shows a drop in recalls reported there this year too: about 130 by end-October compared to 251 over 2019. That website also curiously records fewer recalls annually for “consumer products” (excluding vehicles, foods and healthcare products) than reported on the OECD portal, suggesting Canada’s recall rate per capita may instead be significantly lower than Australia’s. Importantly, it shows a significant drop in annual recalls from 2009 (306) and 2010 (299) to 2011 (258) and 2012 (236), followed by annual recalls averaging around 250 consistently from 2013-2019. The GSP introduced by the Canada Product Safety Act 2010 therefore seems to have had a positive impact, shifting supplier mindsets towards adopting a more pro-active approach including better safety assessments before putting goods onto the market. Singapore also reported a drop in unsafe children’s products found there the year after it introduced a form of GSP through 2011 Regulations.

In further contrast to Australia, the USA reported significantly fewer recalls following the introduction of third-party conformity assessment for toy exporters after problems emerged particularly with China-sourced products around 2008. Dr Niven et al further note that Australian recall notices do not need to include some significant information, eg regarding (even de-identified) injuries. Many Australian recalls of child products also involve breaches of the mandatory standards that have actually been set. (For more details, see her PhD thesis now available here.)

Our regulators could try to sanction local suppliers more for such breaches. But introducing a broader GSP would encourage a “paradigm shift” needed among Australian firms. As discussed in my article, this ACL reform could complemented (but not replaced) by some of the other RIS options, and/or a “product safety substantiation notice” power (mirroring ACL s219, allowing regulators to require suppliers to substantiate claims or misrepresentations that might be misleading).

Introducing a GSP would make Australian suppliers think more carefully about (and document) safety assessments before putting consumer products on the market. This is more efficient and safer than releasing products and then trying to recall them after problems start to be reported, hoping not too many (more) consumers get harmed. It would also encourage Australian firms to “trade up”, like counterparts overseas, to the standards expected in many of our trading partners.

[Luke Nottage receives funding from the Australian Research Council: DP170103136, “Evaluating consumer product regulatory responses to improve child safety”. He provides occasional pro bono advice to Choice regarding consumer law and policy reform, and acknowledges assistance from them in compiling from government recalls data what is reproduced here as Figure 1.]

Book in Press with Elgar: ‘International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration – Australia and Japan in Regional and Global Contexts’

[Updates: On 24 March 2022 Kyoto University awarded me an LLD by publications for this book. In February 2022, Transnational Dispute Management published a report of (Young-OGEMID listserv) Q&A about these selected essays on international arbitration. The book was formally launched by Chief Justice Allsop of the Federal Court of Australia on 17 June 2021, and has attracted several favourable reviews (see extracts after the book Endorsements below).

The 160,000-word manuscript was published by Elgar, in February 2021, after careful kind proof-reading by James Tanna (CAPLUS student intern, 2020) and research assistance from Dr Nobumichi Teramura (CAPLUS Associate and co-editor/author in other works, eg our recent Kluwer book on new frontiers in Asia-Pacific international dispute resolution). My short video recording outlining the book can also now be viewed via Youtube at https://youtu.be/mlSJcitswX4, the introductory chapter is here, and a 35% discount order form is here.]

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many international arbitrations online, potentially making the field increasingly global and informal, as arbitrators adopt more efficient procedures and experience fewer challenges. But will it last? We have seen a similar trend before, over the 1990s, reacting to concerns over growing costs and delays over the 1970s and 1980s, linked to the influx of Anglo-American law firms into the international commercial arbitration world. Yet formalisation has resurfaced over the last 10-15 years, despite arbitration’s move East and consequent globalisation, partly due to the rapid growth of treaty-based investor-state arbitration. This 12-chapter book examines how international commercial and investor-state arbitration has been framed by this evolving relationship between twin tensions, ‘in/formalisation’ and ‘glocalisation’. Interweaving historical, comparative, empirical and doctrinal research over two decades [updating and expanding several publications hyperlinked below], the book focuses on attempts by Australia and Japan to become less peripheral players in international arbitration, especially in Asia-Pacific context.

Keywords: international dispute resolution, international commercial arbitration, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), foreign investment (FDI), Asian and comparative law, treaty-making and law reform processes

Special features: The book (1) combines analysis of both international commercial and investment treaty arbitration, (2) using mixed methods (historical, comparative, empirical and doctrinal research), (3) presenting the first detailed comparison of Australia and Japan, (4) drawing implications for their stakeholders as well as post-pandemic arbitration.

Endorsements:

‘This important work by an eminent scholar in the field of international commercial arbitration provides a valuable opportunity to step back from day-to-day events and experiences and view them from the perspective of an analytical framework, enabling important trends, policy issues and principles to be identified. Combining intellectual academic rigour with practical applications and illustrations of the principles discussed, the author draws upon empirical research and established trends to predict likely developments in arbitration in a post-pandemic global economy.’
– Wayne Martin AC QC, Francis Burt Chambers and former Chief Justice of Western Australia

‘This is a much-awaited book that illuminates international arbitration perspectives, policies, and practices of two major economies in the Asia-Pacific region. Particularly, perhaps reflecting the relative paucity of ISDS cases involving Japanese investors or the Japanese government, there is a general paucity of prior scholarship on Japan’s ISDS approaches, and this book fills this gap. At a time when ISDS is at a crossroads, the author’s acute analysis of state practice and policy formation based on analytical frameworks of “localised globalism” and “in/formalisation” provides invaluable guidance for domestic and international policy-makers, private practitioners, and academics.’
– Professor Tomoko Ishikawa, Nagoya University, Japan

‘Cross-border dispute settlement in the Asia-Pacific has grown increasingly complex and dynamic in recent years. In this book, one of our keenest observers of the region traces evolving developments in Australia and Japan, examining the trajectories of commercial and investor-state arbitration within a common framework. We could have no better guide to the shifts, stops and starts that have characterized this evolving field of law and practice.’
– Professor Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School, USA

Reviews

“Anyone who practices international arbitration in the Asia-Pacific region or is a scholar of the field will enjoy this book and find it useful as a resource in the years ahead” Dr Sam Luttrell[i]

“a genuine tour d’horizon, with insights going far beyond the two jurisdictions of Australia and Japan … a fascinating analysis of the development of commercial and investment arbitration over the last two decades” Dr Lars Markert & Dr Anne-Marie Doernenberg[ii]

“of interest to a fair range of parties concerned with international arbitration” Eugene Thong[iii]

“useful for readers interested in the history of international commercial arbitration or investor-state arbitration; or for those especially interested in how each of these have played out within either Australia or Japan” Taryn Marks[iv]

“Young-OGEMID Author Interview Professor Luke Nottage (2021)” (16 page Q&A about the book) Reported by Piergiuseppe Pusceddu [v]

[i] Clifford Chance, Perth: 96 Aust LJ 142-44 (2022) at 144.

[ii] Nishimura and Asahi, Tokyo; 54 JJL (2022) 307-13 at 309.

[iii] Arbitration Chambers, Singapore: 17(2) AIAJ 177-81 (2021)

[iv] Stanford University: 49(2) Intl J Legal Info 134 (2021) at 136

[v] University of Tilburg: November 2021 listserv discussion edited and published in Transnational Dispute Management (Feb 2022) https://www.transnational-dispute-management.com/young-ogemid/author-interviews-luke-nottage.asp

Chapter 1. In/formalisation and Glocalisation Tensions in International Arbitration

Abstract: This introductory Chapter outlines the trajectory of two growing fields of cross-border dispute resolution – international commercial arbitration (Part I of the Book) and international investment treaty arbitration (Part III) – as well as some crossovers (Part II). Australia and Japan, bearing important similarities in both fields and a few significant differences, are examined in Asia-Pacific and global contexts. An evolving and complex tension emerges between more formal versus informal approaches within international arbitration (‘in/formalisation’) and between globalisation and national or local circumstances (‘glocalisation’). International arbitration was first quite informal yet global, then became more formalised under growing influence of the common law tradition. It then saw some pushback towards more informal (or at least speedier) arbitrations amidst further globalisation over the 1990s, a tendency now re-emerging amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the last 10-15 years have seen resurgent costs and delays, which could well resurface.

Part I: International Commercial Arbitration in Japan and Australia

2. The Vicissitudes of Transnational Commercial Arbitration and the Lex Mercatoria: A View from the Periphery

Abstract: This Chapter outlines two important empirical studies from the 1990s, setting an historical and theoretical benchmark for assessing the past and future of international arbitration. Those highlighted a growing formalisation of international commercial arbitration’s over the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by growing influence from Anglo-American legal practice. Yet this Chapter finds some pushback by the late 1990s towards more informal and global approaches. It also highlights further historical contingency by outlining Japan’s attempts around then to revamp its arbitration law. Although that was partly aimed at meeting the evolving international standard, epitomised by the UNCITRAL Model Law, it was part of a much wider justice reform program over 1999-2004 focusing primarily on domestic dispute resolution. Such ‘localised globalism’ contrasts with Japan’s efforts from 2018 to promote itself as another regional hub for international arbitration (outlined in Chapter 4), which therefore instead suggest more ‘localised globalism’.

3. The Procedural Lex Mercatoria: The Past, Present and Future of International Commercial Arbitration

Abstract: The substantive lex mercatoria (international contract law) is showing signs of growing formalisation. Similarly, international commercial arbitration law and practice – as the procedural lex mercatoria – became increasingly formalised over the 1980s. However, during the 1990s there was some shift back towards more informalism (especially to regain the advantage of speedier proceedings compared to cross-border litigation) as well as more global solutions to major issues arising in the arbitration world. This is illustrated by outlining developments across thirteen key ‘pressure points’ in international commercial arbitration law and practice, covering hot topics related to the arbitration agreement, arbitral procedure, award enforcement, and overarching issues. The Chapter indicates scope for further and more consistent developments towards restoring globalised and informal approaches. Yet it leaves open the possibility of international arbitration reverting to greater formalisation – in fact found especially over the last 10-15 years (as illustrated in Part II of this Book).

4. Japan’s Arbitration Law of 2003: Early and Recent Assessments

Abstract: Japan’s Arbitration Act 2003 was part of justice system reforms focused on domestic dispute resolution, although based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. The Act left few major interpretive issues, and created scope eventually to enhance international arbitration in Japan. Yet neither type of cases has grown significantly. There were also significant continuities evident from the persistent use of Arb-Med to promote early settlement during arbitrations. The stagnation in annual arbitration filings cannot be linked to adverse Japanese case law. That developed in an internationalist, pro-arbitration spirit, evident through a comparative analysis for example with Australian case law. Other institutional barriers to arbitration remain, despite Japan’s new initiatives since 2018 demonstrating ‘localised globalism’. General, organisational and legal culture in Japan will likely keep mutually reinforcing economically rational motivations helping to curb costs and delays in dispute resolution, even as Japan now seeks to promote international arbitration through updated global models.

5. International Commercial Arbitration in Australia: What’s New and What’s Next?

Abstract: Not much had changed by 2013, after Australia amended in 2010 its International Arbitration Act 1974, incorporating most of the 2006 revisions to the UNCITRAL Model Law. There was no evidence yet of a broader anticipated ‘cultural reform’ that would make international arbitration speedier and more cost-effective. One dispute engendered at least five sets of proceedings, including a constitutional challenge. Case disposition statistics for Federal Court cases decided three years before and after the 2010 amendments revealed minor differences. Various further statutory amendments therefore seemed advisable to encourage a more internationalist interpretation. However, an updated analysis notes only a few minor revisions. There remains a significant step-up in annual cases filed under the Act, and some improved Federal Court case disposition times only since 2017. Despite generally more pro-arbitration case law, challenges remain in pushing international arbitration in Australia towards a more informal (especially time- and cost-effective) and global approach.

Part II: Crossovers from International Commercial to Investor-State Arbitration

6. In/formalisation and Glocalisation of International Commercial Arbitration and Investment Treaty Arbitration in Asia

Abstract: International (commercial) arbitration has experienced a dramatic diffusion from West to East, but ‘in/formalisation’ and ‘glocalisation’ tensions endure. Empirical research shows that delays and especially costs have been escalating world-wide, reflecting and promoting formalisation. This is not just due the growing volume and complexity of deals and disputes. It parallels a dramatic worldwide expansion of international law firms, and large home-grown law firms emerging in Asia. Confidentiality in arbitration exacerbates information asymmetries, dampening competition. Such developments are particularly problematic as large law firms have moved into investment treaty arbitration. Yet moves underway towards greater transparency in that burgeoning and overlapping field could eventually help reduce some of these problems. Somewhat ironically, they are likely to persist in the world of international commercial arbitration despite the growing concerns of users themselves, including a new wave of Asian companies that have started to resolve commercial disputes through international arbitration.

7. A Weather Map for International Arbitration: Mainly Sunny, Some Cloud, Possible Thunderstorms

Abstract: This Chapter helps anticipate the future trajectory of international arbitration by first revisiting how Anglo-American influence over the 1970s and 1980s contributed to the formalisation of international arbitration, generating costs and delays. Over the 1950s and 1960s, many cases involved investment disputes with host states, yet the normative paradigm was more global and informal. Despite arbitration’s ‘move East’ over the last 20 years, formalisation of international commercial arbitration persists, linked to information asymmetries. Investment treaty arbitration may exert counterbalancing influence, through its greater transparency. Yet it risks promoting even greater formalization, and there are serious doubts about its long-term viability, including in Asia. The main theoretical underpinning for international commercial arbitration has settled into a variant of ‘neoclassical’ theory in contract law, with some recent arguments for even greater formalisation, but investment treaty arbitration opens the possibility for more theoretical diversity and therefore debate about international arbitration’s foundations and future.

8. Confidentiality versus Transparency in International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration in Australia and Japan

Abstract: Confidentiality is still widely seen as significant advantage of international commercial arbitration over cross-border litigation, especially in Asia. This is evident in most arbitral rules, and many arbitration statutes – including eventually in Australia. Yet no confidentiality is provided in Japan’s later adoption of the Model Law, although parties mostly choose local arbitral institutions so opt-in to their Rules, which have somewhat expanded confidentiality obligations since 2014. Another recent complication is growing public concern over arbitration procedures through (especially treaty-based) investor-state dispute settlement, particularly in Australia. Statutory amendments in 2018 reverse automatic confidentiality for Australia-seated arbitrations applying the 2014 UNCITRAL Transparency Rules. Yet such concerns may impede enactment of provisions extending confidentiality to court proceedings involving commercial arbitrations. Confidentiality could allow more informal and efficient arbitrations, but exacerbate information asymetries allowing service providers increase costs. Greater transparency is more justified (and increasingly found) in investment arbitration, implicating greater public interests.

Part III: International Investment Treaties and Investor-State Arbitration

9. Throwing the Baby with the Bathwater: Australia’s 2011-13 Policy Against Treaty-Based Investor-State Arbitration

Abstract: Treaties allowing investors to initiate arbitration claims directly against host states, for illegally interfering with cross-border investments, are increasingly common in Asia. Yet a centre-left government declared over 2011-2013 that Australia would no longer include such protections in future treaties. This risked undermining the entire investor-state arbitration system, and major then-pending treaty negotiations by Australia with Japan, China and Korea, significantly reducing FDI flows and having other adverse effects. This Chapter criticises the underlying cost-benefit analysis conducted in 2010 by an Australian government think-tank. The arguments and evidence are more nuanced, justifying more tailored and moderate changes for future treaties. Yet an interest-group analysis suggests surprisingly few public or private constituencies preferring such reforms, and the problem could spread around Asia. A sharp shift would indicate a more idiosyncratic, nation-centric rather than global approach, but with somewhat mixed effects regarding formalisation of the overall international arbitration field.

10. Investor-State Arbitration: Why Not in the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement?

Abstract: Japan signed a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Australia in 2014, notably omitting investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Japan seems not to have offered enough to secure this extra protection for its firms’ investments in Australia, for the latter to risk domestic political controversy. Japan probably also hoped to obtain the protection through a mega-regional treaty– in fact achieved from 2019. The omission should also be understood in the wider context of Japan’s investment treaty practice. That was initially belated and flexible, but has become more pro-active since 2013. Japan’s practice overall presents another example of ‘localised globalism’. Japan’s treaties have also become more formalised as they have adopted more consistently US-style drafting since 2002 (like Australia). This greater detail may perversely result in to more costs and delays if and when the mostly ISDS-backed treaty provisions are invoked. Yet there are few claims formally pursued by Japanese investors, and none yet filed against Japan.

11. Investor-State Arbitration Policy and Practice in Australia

Abstract: Australia has investment treaties in force with 32 economies, all with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), except regarding New Zealand and the USA. Yet ISDS only started being debated politically as Australia signed its FTA with the US in 2004, and particularly around 2011 when a mega-regional treaty was being negotiated and Philip Morris Asia brought the first ISDS claim against Australia over tobacco controls. A centre-left Government over 2011-13 eschewed ISDS for future treaties, but centre-right governments reverted to allowing it on a case-by-case assessment, and the Greens’ ‘anti-ISDS’ Bill went nowhere. The debate belatedly raised awareness of how Australia’s domestic law provides some lesser investment protections than under international law. More bipartisanship has been emerging since 2019. Australia may therefore keep reverting to a more globalised approach towards ISDS, while continuing to target reforms that can reduce formalisation, particularly in the form of ISDS-related costs and delays.

12: Beyond the Pandemic: Towards More Global and Informal Approaches to International Arbitration

Abstract: Overall, this Book traces the trajectory of both international commercial arbitration and investor-state arbitration, especially since the 1990s, focusing on Australia and Japan in regional and global contexts. It demonstrates the usefulness of the dual themes or vectors of ‘in/formalisation’ and ‘glocalisation’ for understanding the past and for assessing future developments in international arbitration. Part I of this Chapter considers the longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020. It speculates about the future for the observed proliferation of webinars, and the pandemic’s push towards virtual hearings or e-arbitrations, as well as further diversification of arbitral seats – including potentially for Australia and Japan. Part II ends more normatively with recommendations for more productive cooperation, bilaterally but also regionally, among academics, lawyers and arbitrators, judges and governments. It identifies key Asia-Pacific organisations and opportunities for promoting a global and somewhat more informal approach to international arbitration into the 21st century.

New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution (Luke Nottage, Shahla Ali, Bruno Jetin & Nobumichi Teramura, eds., Wolters Kluwer, end-2020): Abstracts, Keywords, Bios & Webinar

Below are summaries and author bios of the 15 chapters in our Kluwer book published around Christmas for January 2021, building on a joint HKU/USydney project throughout 2019 background and draft bios here), with a Foreword by Michael Hwang SC here. Please consider registering or telling your networks about a free Webinar with the co-editors, some authors and others, scheduled for Tuesday 4 August 2020 5-6pm (Sydney time): https://law-events.sydney.edu.au/talkevents/beyond-the-pandemic-new-frontiers-in-asia-pacific-international-dispute-resolution . [A webinar recording can now be found via https://www.sydney.edu.au/law/news-and-events/podcasts.html or on Youtube.]

Introduction: New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific Trade, Investment and International Business Dispute Resolution –Luke Nottage & Bruno Jetin

Abstract: Asia-Pacific trade and investment flows have burgeoned over recent decades, albeit impacted by China-US trade tensions and especially the COVID-19 pandemic (§1.02). International investment agreements have proliferated to liberalise and protect investments (§1.03), mostly adding the option of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Asia-related ISDS cases have also started to grow, albeit somewhat belatedly (§1.04), complementing a more longstanding upward trend in international commercial arbitration (ICA) cases involving Asian parties filed in the region as well as the traditional Western centres (§1.05). The eastward shift in international dispute resolution has already involved initiatives to improve not just support for ICA and ISDS arbitrations, but also to develop alternatives such as international commercial courts and mediation. Core arguments from ensuing chapters (§1.06) cover the main existing venues for international dispute resolution in Asia (China, Hong Kong and Singapore) but also some emerging contenders (Japan, Malaysia, India and Australia). Overall (§1.07), can ICA venues improve their attractiveness through law reforms, case law development and other measures, despite growing concerns about costs and delays? Will some emerging concerns about ISDS prompt Asia-Pacific states to become more active “rule makers” in international investment law? How might these issues be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?

Keywords: international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), free trade agreements (FTAs), international investment treaties, international economic law, arbitration, mediation, international commercial courts, Asia, COVID-1

2. An International Commercial Court for Australia: An Idea Worth Taking to Market – Marilyn Warren & Clyde Croft

The time has come for Australia to join others in establishing a new “International Commercial Court” as another international dispute resolution option especially for the Asia-Pacific region. This chapter outlines the existing international legislative architecture (the 1958 NYC for international arbitration, inspiring the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention), and the models provided by London’s venerable Commercial Court and since 2015 the Singapore International Commercial Court (including the latter’s composition, jurisdiction, procedure and confidentiality provisions, appeals, and cross-border enforceability of its judgements – facilitated by Singapore ratifying the 2005 Hague Convention). It uses these topics to frame the proposal for an Australian International Commercial Court, including the possibility of allowing its litigants to exclude the application of the Australian Consumer Law (which otherwise may apply also to many business-to-business disputes). It concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic has bolstered the case for such a new Court, by minimising the obstacle of Australia’s physical distance as litigation has had to move rapidly online, and because the pandemic’s economic dislocation will undoubtedly lead to more cross-border disputes.

Keywords: international arbitration, international litigation, international commercial courts, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, COVID-13.

3. New Frontiers for International Commercial Arbitration in Australia: Beyond the ‘Lucky Country’ – Albert Monichino & Nobumichi Teramura

Abstract: Australia is not a lucky country in the context of international commercial arbitration (ICA) due to its geographical isolation. However, the problem of remoteness has luckily been ameliorated since the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the dramatic spread of video-conferencing technologies in arbitrations and even in some court proceedings. ‘Luck’ can no longer excuse Australia for running behind other regional competitors. Analysing recent cases in Australian judiciary, this chapter puts forward seven proposals for legislative reform that may be useful for Australia to attract more ICA cases on its shores: establishing an indemnity costs principle for failed challenges in ICA matters, notably regarding arbitral awards; enabling Australian courts to issue subpoenas to support foreign arbitrations; clarifying choice of law rules on the existence and scope of arbitration agreements; limiting or excluding the application of Australian Consumer Law to cross-border business-to-business transactions; defining ‘Australian Law’; provisions to catch up with recent arbitration innovations; clarifying arbitrability of trust disputes; and centralising judicial power for ICA appeals. Implementing those proposals will pave the way for Australia to become an attractive arbitration hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

Keywords: Australia, international commercial arbitration, International Arbitration Act, Commercial Arbitration Act, law reform, COVID-19, e-proceedings.

4. Confidentiality and Transparency in International Arbitration: Asia-Pacific Tensions and Expectations – Luke Nottage

Abstract: Confidentiality is considered a significant advantage for international commercial arbitration over cross-border litigation, as seen in rules of most arbitral institutions. Automatic (opt-out) confidentiality is also now found in many national laws, including statutory add-ons to the UNCITRAL Model Law and/or through case law for example in New Zealand, then Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and eventually Australia. Yet there remain variations in the timing of these developments as well as the scope and procedures associated with exceptions. There is also no confidentiality provided in Japan’s later Model Law adoption, although parties mostly choose the JCAA so opt-in to its Rules, which have gradually extended confidentiality obligations. Another complication is growing public concern over arbitration procedures through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), particularly in Australia since an ultimately unsuccessful treaty claim by Philip Morris. Statutory amendments in 2018 reverse automatic confidentiality for Australia-seated ISDS arbitrations applying the 2014 UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency. Concerns over ISDS may even impede Australia enacting provisions for confidentiality of arbitration-related court proceedings. These provisions could not be revised recently in New Zealand, against the backdrop of its new government’s anti-ISDS stance. This chapter elaborates such expectations and tensions regarding the double-edged sword of confidentiality in international arbitration, focusing on Australia and Japan in regional context.

Keywords: international commercial arbitration, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), confidentiality, transparency, Australia, Japan, Asia, costs, delays, law reform

5. Novel and Noteworthy Aspects of Australia’s Recent Investment Agreements and ISDS Policy: The CPTPP, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Mauritius Transparency Treaties – Ana Ubilava & Luke Nottage

Abstract: This chapter updates on recent investment treaty practice by Australia, which attracted regional and global attention when a centre-left government over 2011-13 declared Australia would no longer agree to ISDS provisions when negotiating further treaties. The chapter compares substantive commitments and ISDS provisions in Australia’s treaties signed with Indonesia and Hong Kong in 2019 (IA-CEPA and AHKIA) compared especially with the mega-regional CPTPP signed in 2018. The new bilateral treaties remain quite heavily influenced by US-style drafting, epitomised by the CPTPP. The chapter then elaborates on the costs and delays associated with ISA. It examines empirical studies, then relevant provisions of the three new treaties, including an innovative investor-state mediation provision in IA-CEPA probably proposed by Indonesia. The chapter also considers transparency of proceedings and outcomes. It again examines mainly CPTPP, IA-CEPA and AHKIA, but also a parliamentary inquiry into Australia ratifying the Mauritius Convention. This seeks to retrofit extensive transparency provisions on pre-2014 treaties between Australia and other states that might also accede to that framework Convention. More bipartisanship may be emerging in domestic politics regarding international investment treaty-marking, so Australia is now better placed to play a more active role especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

Keywords: Investment treaties, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, mediation, arbitration, transparency, costs, delay

6. New Frontiers in Hong Kong’s Resolution of ‘One Belt One Road’ International Commercial and Investor-State Disputes – Shahla Ali

Abstract: Given the rapid increase in Chinese outward foreign direct investment since the start of the ‘One Belt One Road’ Initiative (OBOR), international commercial and investor state disputes involving Chinese and Hong Kong investors will likely multiply. Given the significance of Hong Kong as a fulcrum for OBOR project financing and logistics, understanding Hong Kong’s approach to the resolution of OBOR disputes will offer a window into the region’s new frontiers in commercial and investor-state dispute resolution.

Keywords: international commercial arbitration, mediation, investment treaties, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), Hong Kong, China, Belt and Road

7. Harmonising the Public Policy Exception for International Commercial Arbitration along the ‘Belt and Road’ – Gu Weixia

Abstract: In context of a rising volume of cross-border transactions generated by the BRI, this chapter argues that a robust legal framework for dispute resolution is required to forge investor confidence and enable BRI’s integral goal of economic integration. In light of the substantial levels of harmonization among arbitration laws, arbitration is arguably constitutes the primary vehicle for international commercial dispute resolution in an economically integrated Asia under the BRI. Against this backdrop, this chapter argues that the BRI provides a unique opportunity to contemplate the possibility of regional harmonization, as within the Asian economies along the BRI, of the “public policy” exception to arbitral award enforcement. Such an arbitration initiative in Asia, in which China is anticipated to take a pro-active role, holds much potential to project renewed momentum on China as an engine of not only economic power, but also “soft power” transformation in pioneering international legal norms.

Keywords: international commercial arbitration, New York Convention, UNCITRAL Model Law, China, Belt and Road

8. Recent Developments in China in Cross-Border Dispute Resolution: Judicial Reforms in the Shadow of Political Conformity – Vivienne Bath

Abstract: The rapid expansion of China’s international trade and investment in the 21^st century has necessarily brought with it the need for modern and effective cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms. At the international level, China is playing an active role in the review of investor-state dispute settlement in UNCITRAL Working Group III and participating in dispute resolution developments in the WTO. Domestically, the Supreme People’s Court has been working to set up new institutions (the China International Commercial Court), improve mechanisms for the review and enforcement of arbitral awards and encourage mediation, both domestically and internationally. Much of this activity has been generated and spurred on by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the anticipated associated increase in cross-border disputes arising from the many commercial transactions involved in the BRI. Its execution also reflects the desire to encourage and expand the international use of Chinese law and build up China as a centre for international dispute resolution. At the same time, however, the Chinese Communist Party is tightening its ideological and administrative control over the courts and judicial system. This chapter examines and discusses the implications of these recent developments.

Keywords: China, arbitration, mediation, cross-border dispute resolution, one-stop diversified dispute resolution, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), online arbitration, communist party (CCP), Supreme People’s Court (SPC), China International Commercial Court (CICC)

9. Malaysia’s Involvement in International Business Dispute Resolution – A Vijayalakshmi Venugopal

Abstract: Malaysia has had some early but comparatively limited involvement in formally resolving trade disputes, but more engagement in investor-state dispute resolution – including as home state for investors bringing claims, not just as host state respondent. Some companies in Malaysia and its main international arbitration centre have also been involved in domain name dispute resolution. That centre and some other organisations have also long promoted various types of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), with renewed efforts in recent years to develop new procedures and attract more international commercial arbitrations. Malaysia has also been quite active in negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). This creates a solid platform to comtinuing becoming more of a rule maker in international investment law as well as a significant regional hub for international business dispute resolution services, although Malaysia still has a way to go in both respects compared to larger Asia-Pacific economies and/or more established hubs.

Keywords: Malaysia, World Trade Organization (WTO), free trade agreements (FTAs), international investment treaties, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), domain name dispute resolution, settlement

10. Disruption as a Catalyst for International Dispute Services in Japan: No Longer Business as Usual? – James Claxton, Luke Nottage & Nobumichi Teramura

Abstract: The Japanese government, supported by various stakeholders, has recently been attempting to develop Japan as another regional hub for international business dispute resolution services. Tracking this development is important for both theoretical and practical reasons. How it unfolds should reveal which of various theories for explaining Japanese law-related behaviour have more traction nowadays, especially for international commercial arbitration but also for investor-state arbitration. Assessing the new initiatives is also important for legal practitioners and others interested in the practical question of where to arbitrate or mediate cross-border business disputes, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. This chapter therefore focuses mainly on current attempts to promote existing and new international arbitration centres in Japan as well as the recent establishment of the Japan International Mediation Center – Kyoto. It locates such developments in the context of intensifying competition from other regional venues for dispute resolution services, but also the challenges and potential opportunities created by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020.

Keywords: international commercial arbitration, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), mediation, Japan, culture, COVID-19

11. Litigating, Arbitrating and Mediating Japan-Korea Trade and Investment Tensions – James Claxton, Luke Nottage & Brett Williams

Abstract: In July 2019, Japan introduced measures tightening export restrictions to South Korea on three chemicals critical to the manufacture of consumer electronics. The restrictions prompted an animated response by the Korean government, including World Trade Organization (WTO) consultations and threats to terminate an intelligence-sharing agreement. The controversy also filtered down to the public with boycotts of Japanese products in Korea. Tension between the states has been unusually high since 2018 when the Korean Supreme Court affirmed a judgment against Japanese companies accused of forcing Korean nationals to labour in factories during Japan’s colonial rule. Japan argued that these claims were precluded by a 1965 treaty normalizing post-war relations. While Japan claims that its trade restrictions were not motivated by the judgment, the disputes have contributed to the worst breakdown in cross-border relations in five decades. This chapter evaluates Korea’s trade claims against Japan, means of resolving them, and challenges faced in the WTO dispute settlement system. Alternatives or additions to WTO dispute settlement procedures are considered including claims before the International Court of Justice, interstate arbitration, and investor-state dispute settlement. Mediation offers an effective means to facilitate negotiations and centralise the trade and treaty disputes in a single forum.

Keywords: international trade law, World Trade Organization (WTO), exports, international investment treaties, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), arbitration, mediation, Japan, Korea

12. Indian Investment Treaty and Arbitration Practice: Qualitatively and Quantitatively Assessing Recent Developments– Jaivir Singh

Abstract: This chapter provides a perspective of investment treaty practice from India, which lies at the periphery of what is traditionally associated with the Asia Pacific region. While on the periphery, India has signed investment and trade treaties with many Asia Pacific countries and is also involved in disputes with them. India had in fact endorsed a number of investment treaties with many countries around the world but has recently gone on to denounce all of them and seeks to renegotiate fresh treaties using a template provided by a new model treaty that is oriented towards privileging state rights. The chapter begins by a qualitative review of cases that have been instituted against India by investors, followed by a discussion of the many reactions that this has elicited – a new model treaty, subsequent denunciation of treaties, signing of new treaties and attempting changes in the domestic law as a device to protect foreign investors. The next half of the chapter assesses these outcomes by looking at econometric evidence pointing to a positive impact of investment treaties signed by India on foreign investment inflows into India, going on to argue that the manner in which state rights have been enhanced in the new treaties – drawing inspiration from trade law – demonstrably curbs investment.

Keywords: foreign direct investment (FDI), international investment treaties, arbitration, econometrics, law reform, India, Australia

13. FTA Dispute Resolution to Protect Health Can Free Trade Agreements and their Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Help Protect the Environment and Public Health? The CPTTP, MARPOL73/78 and COVID-19 – Jiaxiang Hu & Jeanne Huang

Abstract: Preventing or managing a global pandemic such as COVID-19 requires states to strictly comply with the International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR). However, the IHR lacks a strong enforcement mechanism, like many multilateral environmental protection agreements. Over the past fifteen years, several such conventions have been incorporated into free trade agreements (FTAs) to enhance State compliance and therefore promote environmental protection. A typical example is the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships and its Protocols (MARPOL 73/78). Vessels, like viruses, are globally mobile. Vessel-sourced pollution also mirrors human-carried viral infection, because the locations of potential harm are unpredictable and widespread. This Chapter examines first whether FTAs (especially mega-regional FTAs) can effectively encourage States to comply with MARPOL 73/78. Through this analysis, it generates implications regarding whether the IHR regime could also rely on new or renegotiated FTAs, or be reformed directly, to enhance state compliance with public health initiatives.

Keywords: free trade agreements (FTAs), environmental protection, public health, COVID-19, WHO, MARPOL, dispute resolution, arbitration, Asia-Pacific

14. Promoting International Mediation through the Singapore Convention – S.I. Strong

Abstract: This chapter seeks to determine whether and what extent the recent promulgation of the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation will promote the use of mediation within the international legal and business communities. The discussion analyses the issue from a unique interdisciplinary perspective, applying concepts from dispute system design, default theory, psychology, and law and economics to both identify and resolve potential problems with the convention. The chapter also includes data from a recent empirical study conducted by the author on the use of mediation in international commercial disputes. Through this discussion, the chapter hopes to identify how individuals and institutions can complement the effect of the convention to support the development of international commercial mediation in the coming years.

Keywords: International mediation, treaty-making, law reform, Singapore Convention, interdisciplinary perspectives

15. Expanding Asia-Pacific Frontiers for International Dispute Resolution: Conclusions and Recommendations – Nobumichi Teramura, Shahla Ali & Anselmo Reyes

Abstract: Asia’s emergence as a global economic powerhouse has corresponded with a prolonged upward trend in international commercial arbitration (ICA) cases involving Asian parties, as well as a belated expansion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) arbitrations involving Asian states or investors. Further accelerating the eastward shift in international dispute resolution, various initiatives to improve support for ICA and ISDS have been taken and alternatives (such as international commercial courts and international commercial mediation) have been promoted. This book aimed to examine significant ‘new frontiers’ for Asia-Pacific cross-border business dispute resolution, focusing on major economies in East and South Asia and countries (such as Australia) that are closely linked economically and geographically. The principal questions posed were: (1) whether existing and new venues for ICA could improve their attractiveness through law reform, case law development, and other measures, despite worries about cost and delay; (2) whether emerging concerns about ISDS-backed investment treaty commitments would prompt Asian states to become rule-makers in international investment law, rather than be mere rule-takers; and (3) whether innovations in existing or new fields might assist the Asia-Pacific region to develop international dispute settlement further. The foregoing chapters have discussed these broad themes, focusing on developments in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, India and Malaysia, while paying attention to broader regional initiatives (such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)) and recent international instruments (such as the Singapore Convention on Mediation, in force from 12 September 2020). This concluding chapter highlights key findings in the individual chapters and identifies some challenges for the post-COVID-19 era.

Keywords: international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), free trade agreements (FTAs), international investment treaties, international economic law, arbitration, mediation, international commercial courts, Asia, COVID-19

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BIOS OF EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Dr Shahla Ali is Professor and Associate Dean (International) and Deputy Director of the LLM in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. Her research and practice center on questions of governance, development and the resolution of cross-border disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. Shahla is the author of Court Mediation Reform (Edward Elgar 2018), Governing Disasters: Engaging Local Populations in Humanitarian Relief (Cambridge University Press 2016), Consumer Financial Dispute Resolution in a Comparative Context (Cambridge University Press 2013), and Resolving Disputes in the Asia Pacific Region (Routledge 2010) and she writes for law journals in the area of comparative ADR. She has consulted with USAID, IFC/World Bank and the United Nations on issues pertaining to access to justice, peace process negotiation training and land use conflict resolution. She serves as a bilingual arbitrator (English/Chinese) with CIETAC, HKIAC (ADNDRC) and SIAC and has served on the IBA Drafting Committee for Investor-State Mediation Rules, the DOJ Mediation Regulatory Committee, the UN Mediation Roster and the FDRC Appointments Committee. Prior to HKU, she worked as an international trade attorney with Baker & McKenzie in its San Francisco office. She received her JD and PhD from UC Berkeley in Jurisprudence and Social Policy and BA from Stanford University.

Dr Bruno Jetin is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute of Asian Studies, University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). His current work focuses on the ASEAN Economic Community, the One Belt One Road initiative, Chinese investments in Southeast Asia, and the impact of income distribution on growth in Asia. He is also an expert in the automobile industry. Before joining UBD, he was a researcher at the Institute for Research on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC, CNRS-MAEE, Bangkok) and Associate Professor at the University of Paris 13 Sorbonne Paris Cité, where he obtained his PhD in economics and was Deputy Director of the Research Center in Economics. He was also involved in promoting taxes on financial transactions as alternative sources for financing development as well as innovative regulation of global finance. Bruno’s recent publications include ASEAN Economic Community: A model for Asia-wide Integration? (Palgrave McMillan 2016, edited with Mia Mikic); Global Automobile Demand (Palgrave McMillan 2015, two edited volumes); International Investment Policy for Small States: The Case of Brunei, in International Investment Treaties and Arbitration Across Asia (Julien Chaisse and Luke Nottage eds., Brill 2018, with Julien Chaisse); One Belt-One Road Initiative and ASEAN Connectivity, in China’s Global Rebalancing and the New Silk Road (B.R. Deepak ed., Springer 2018).

Dr Luke Nottage is Professor of Comparative and Transnational Business Law at the University of Sydney Law School, founding Co-Director of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL) and Special Counsel at Williams Trade Law. He specialises in comparative and transnational business law (especially arbitration and product safety law), with a particular interest in Japan and the Asia-Pacific. Luke has or had executive roles in the Australia-Japan Society (NSW), the Law Council of Australia’s International Law Section, the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, and the Asia-Pacific Forum for International Arbitration. Luke is also a Rules committee member of the Australian Centre for International Arbitration (ACICA) and listed on the Panel of Arbitrators for the AIAC (formerly KLRCA), BAC, JCAA, KCAB, NZIAC, SCIA and TAI. Luke serves on Working Group 6 (examining arbitrator neutrality) for the Academic Forum on ISDS. He qualified as a lawyer in New Zealand in 1994 and in New South Wales in 2001, and has consulted for law firms and organisations world-wide (including ASEAN, the EC, OECD, UNCTAD and the Japanese government). His 16 other books include International Arbitration in Australia (Federation Press, 2010, eds) and International Investment Treaties and Arbitration Across Asia (Brill, 2018, eds). He is or has been Visiting Professor teaching and researching at universities throughout Asia, Oceania, Europe and North America.

Dr Nobumichi Teramura is an Associate at the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS) and Legal Consultant at Bun & Associates (Cambodia). He is the author of Ex Aequo et Bono as a Response to the Over-judicialisation of International Commercial Arbitration (Wolters Kluwer 2020), based on his doctoral thesis from the University of New South Wales that received a PhD Excellence Award when completed in 2018. Nobu also published recently in the Asian International Arbitration Journal (2019) and ASA Bulletin (2020), and has co-authored a chapter comparing Australia forthcoming in Larry di Matteo et al (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Judicial Control of Arbitral Awards (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Specialising in commercial law, his current research interests include legal integration in Asia and legal development for South East Asian nations severely affected by colonisation and the Cold War, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. He has teaching and research experience in Asia-Pacific jurisdictions including the Philippines, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia and Brunei.

* * *

Vivienne Bath is Professor of Chinese and International Business Law at Sydney Law School and Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS). Her teaching and research interests are in international business and economic law, private international law and Chinese law. She has first class honours in Chinese and in law from the Australian National University, and an LLM from Harvard Law School. She has also studied in China and Germany and has extensive professional experience in Sydney, New York and Hong Kong, specialising in international commercial law, with a focus on foreign investment and commercial transactions in China and the Asian region. Representative publications include: Vivienne Bath & Gabriël Moëns, Law of International Business in Australasia (2nd ed., Federation Press 2019); Overlapping Jurisdiction and the Resolution of Disputes before Chinese and Foreign Courts, 17 Yearbook of International Private Law 111-150 (2015-2016) and The South and Alternative Models of Trade and Investment Regulation – Chinese Outbound Investment and Approaches to International Investment Agreements, in Recalibrating International Investment Law: Global South Initiatives (Fabio Morosini & Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin eds., Cambridge University Press 2018).

James Claxton is Professor of Law at Rikkyo University in Tokyo and Adjunct Faculty for the White & Case International Arbitration LL.M at University of Miami Law School, as well as an independent arbitrator and mediator. He teaches and researches in the fields of international investment law, business and human rights, and international dispute settlement. Previously, he was legal counsel at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington and attorney in the international arbitration practices of law firms in Paris. James regularly advises dispute resolution institutions in Asia and is a member of various working groups devoted to improving international dispute resolution systems.

The Hon Clyde Croft AM SC is Professor of Law at Monash University in Melbourne, as well as a commercial arbitrator and mediator. Until retiring in 2019 he was the judge in charge of the Arbitration List, the Taxation List, and a General Commercial List in the Commercial Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Prior to his Court appointment in 2009, he practiced extensively in property and commercial law and was an arbitrator and mediator in property, construction and general commercial disputes, domestically and internationally. Dr Croft was appointed Senior Counsel in 2000 and holds the degrees of BEc, LLB and LLM from Monash University, and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has chaired the Expert Advisory Committee of the UNCITRAL National Co-ordination Committee of Australia (UNCCA) to support UNCITRAL Working Group II (Disputes) since May 2018. He represented the Asia Pacific Regional Arbitration Group (APRAG) at UNCITRAL from 2005 to 2010, revising the UNCITRAL Model Law and Arbitration Rules, and later co-authored A Guide to the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Dr Croft is a Life Fellow of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA) and of the Resolution Institute (incorporating the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia), a Fellow of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute of New Zealand (AMINZ), the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the Australian Academy of Law and UNCCA.

Weixia Gu is Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Asia-Pacific Interest Group. Her research focuses on international arbitration, dispute resolution, private international law and cross-border legal issues. She is the author, editor, and co-editor of 3 books, including The Developing World of Arbitration in the Asia Pacific (Hart, 2018) and Arbitration in China: Regulation of Arbitration Agreements and Practical Issues (Sweet & Maxwell, 2012). She is the author of more than 50 journal articles and her recent works appear in leading international and comparative law journals, such as the American Journal of Comparative Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Cornell International Law Journal, among others. Her scholarship has been cited by the US Federal Court 11th Circuit, Texas Supreme Court, Hong Kong High Court, Singapore Law Gazette, and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Dr. Gu is an elected Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and sits on the governing councils of Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators and China Society of Private International Law. She also serves as a panel-listed arbitrator in a number of leading arbitration institutions in China and Asia. Before joining the Faculty, she was selected as an Honorary Young Fellow to the New York University Law School in association with her Fulbright Award from the US Department of State.

Dr Hu Jiaxiang is Professor at the KoGuan Law School at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research areas include public international law, international economic law and WTO law. He holds the degrees of BA and MA from Hangzhou University, MPhil in Law from Zhejiang University and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. In the past three decades, Professor Hu has published more than ten books and one hundred articles both in Chinese and English. He has been awarded various honours by the Ministry of Education of China and Shanghai Municipality for his excellence in teaching, and is currently leading several national research programmes.

Dr Jeanne Huang is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School. She was previously Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, and Associate Professor / Associate Dean at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics School of Law in China. She obtained her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Duke University School of Law in 2010. She was a Foreign Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, and also had research experience at The Hague Academy of International Law, and the Paris-based Academy of International Arbitration Law. Jeanne teaches and researches in the fields of private international law, e-commerce regulation, international investment law and dispute resolution (international litigation and arbitration). She has published four books including Interregional Recognition and Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Judgments: Lessons for China from US and EU Laws (Hart, 2014) and her articles have appeared in many peer-reviewed law journals, with extensive competitive funding include from the China National Social Science Fund. In 2015, she won the First Prize of Excellent Scholarship awarded by the China Society of Private International Law and the Nomination Award of the Dong Biwu Prize for Youth Research in Law. Jeanne serves as an arbitrator at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center, Shanghai International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (Shanghai International Arbitration Center), Nanjing Arbitration Commission and Xi’an Arbitration Commission. She also serves as expert witness on issues of private international law and Chinese law in courts in Australia and the US.

Dr Michael Hwang SC is a Singapore-based international arbitrator. He was the Deputy Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts upon its establishment in 2005, and subsequently appointed Chief Justice in 2010, retiring at the end of 2018. Throughout that period, he has continued practising as an international arbitrator in commercial and treaty arbitrations. He has written two volumes of essays on international arbitration and international dispute resolution respectively, and was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Sydney.

Albert Monichino QC is a Melbourne-based barrister and arbitrator, with over 25 years of experience in resolving commercial disputes domestically and internationally. He was appointed Senior Counsel in 2010, and is a former Vice President (Convenor) and Co-Chair of the Arbitration and ADR Section for the Commercial Bar Association of the Victorian Bar (COMMBAR). Albert is a Chartered Arbitrator and Past President of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Australian Branch (CIArb, 2014-17), and is a Fellow of CIArb, ACICA, the Resolution Institute and the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators. He writes extensively on international commercial arbitration in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, including an annual Australian survey for the Australian Dispute Resolution Journal.

Anselmo Reyes SC practises as an arbitrator. He was Professor of Legal Practice at Hong Kong University from October 2012 to September 2018. Before that, he was a judge of the Hong Kong High Court from September 2003 to September 2012, when he was in charge of the Construction and Arbitration List (2004-8) and the Commercial and Admiralty Lists (2008-12). He was Representative of the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s Regional Office Asia Pacific from April 2013 to July 2017. He became an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court in January 2015.

Dr Jaivir Singh is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, having previously taught at the University of Delhi. Trained as an economist at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, his research work aims at an interdisciplinary exploration of the interaction between the law and the economy. He has published on diverse topics including the Indian Constitution, Regulation, Labour Law, Competition Law, Corporate Law and International Investment Treaties.

Dr S.I. Strong is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School, specialising in international dispute resolution and comparative law, particularly international commercial arbitration and large-scale (class and collective) suits. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, she taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford as well as Georgetown Law Center and the University of Missouri. Dr Strong is an experienced practitioner, having acted as Counsel at Baker & McKenzie after working as a dual-qualified lawyer (US attorney and English solicitor) in the New York and London offices of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. She has published over 130 award-winning books, chapters and articles in Europe, Asia and the Americas, including Legal Reasoning Across Commercial Disputes: Comparing Judicial and Arbitral Analyses (anticipated 2021), Arbitration of Trust Disputes: Issues in National and International Law (2016), and Class, Mass, and Collective Arbitration in National and International Law (2013) fromOxford University Press as well as International Commercial Arbitration: A Guide for U.S. Judges (2012) from the Federal Judicial Center. Dr Strong’s scholarly work has been translated into Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese and has been cited as authority by numerous state and federal courts and international tribunals. She Strong sits as an arbitrator and mediator on a variety of international commercial and trust-related matters.

Ana Ubilava is a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney Law School, where she is in the final stages of completing a thesis on investor-state mediation. She has published on international dispute resolution in several periodicals including the Journal of World Investment and Trade. Ana is also Executive Coordinator of the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL).

The Hon Marilyn Warren AC QC is a Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at Monash University, where she is a member of its Global Leaders Summit, and teaches postgraduate commercial law and international arbitration. She was a long-serving Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria (2003-2017), and earlier on that Court (1998-2003) included service as the Judge in Charge of the Commercial List and the Corporations List (now combined as the Commercial Court). Professor Warren was a foundation Council member of the Asian Business Law Institute in Singapore. She now also sits as a domestic and international commercial arbitrator, and is a member of the Dawson Chambers Senior Arbitrator Group at the Victorian Bar (where she became Queen’s Counsel in 1997).

A. Vijayalakshmi Venugopal is Senior Lecturer at Taylor’s University Law School in Malaysia. Her teaching and postgraduate supervisory experience includes WTO law, international dispute resolution, international sale of goods and intellectual property law. She was a visiting lecturer at the University of Rotterdam Business School. She holds Masters degrees in law and educational psychology, and has presented conference papers in these fields. She is the author of three books, and articles in peer-reviewed law journals.

Dr Brett Williams, an Australian Legal Practitioner, is the principal of Williams Trade Law and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney Law School. His legal practice specialises in the law of the World Trade Organization and of bilateral and regional trade agreements, including representation in WTO dispute settlement, accession issues, and also trade issues under Australian law. He has taught WTO law at Sydney Law School since 2001 and is a Research Affiliate of both the Sydney Centre International Law and the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney. His publications include the co-edited book China and the World Trade System (Cambridge University Press, 2003), building on his PhD research, and articles on WTO negotiations on agricultural trade, China’s WTO accession, trade in services and innovations in dispute settlement mechanisms in trade agreements. Brett also serves on the Editorial Board of the Australian International Law Journal. He has held various professional positions, including on the Executive of the International Law Section of the Law Council of Australia (2012-2016) and as inaugural co-chair of the International Economic Law Interest Group of the Australia New Zealand Society of International Law (2010-2012).

Comparing Australia’s Response to COVID-19: Against Whom, What, Why and How? Submission to a Senate Inquiry

Written by: Luke Nottage (Sydney Law School) and Tom van Laer (Sydney Business School)

We welcome this opportunity to provide a Submission to the Australian Parliament’s “Senate Committee on COVID-19” inquiry into the Australian government’s response to the outbreak and pandemic.[1] It seems very early to begin making such an assessment. But we o1ffer from our respective disciplines (comparative law and narratology) some preliminary observations as well as lines for future investigation that may assist Parliament and others contributing to this ongoing debate.

Our analysis builds partly on our recent joint contribution to USydney blogs (here and forthcoming).[2] One key message from that contribution is that this pandemic and its response have created a new narrative world, rather like a peculiar disaster movie, that prioritises only certain types of heroes and “expertise”. Another key point is that different countries nonetheless have been able to respond well if they have and can mobilise citizens’ trust in communities and (generally well-run) government.[3] A third lesson is that as Australia keeps trying now to move into a phase of socio-economic revitalisation, a new narrative will emerge and could be framed by political and other leaders.

In addition, more broadly, basic methodology in comparative law highlights the importance of working out what to compare and why. This is not obvious even if we try to focus on health outcomes. For this parliamentary inquiry, one question is whether to focus on death rates (which are easier to measure and compare, and the ultimate concern) or infection rates (varying widely depending on national testing regimes, but still maybe useful for projecting rates of deaths and serious treatments). On either measure, Australia has been doing extremely well by global standards.

If focusing mainly on COVID-19 death rates in assessing a current or future response, however, another aspect is whether and how to count deaths that are indirectly caused by the virus even over the short- to medium-term. These could include deaths from deferred or delayed surgeries or treatments, a greater than usual number of suicides (prompted by extended isolation) and more fatal traffic accidents (found eg in some parts of Japan despite an overall drop, as travel restrictions emptied streets so cars were driven faster).[4] Even greater complications come from trying to assess long-term consequences for the health and related welfare systems, from lockdown measures that result inevitably in severe economic slowdowns, as the stress from long-term un(der)employment is known to be extensive but hard to measure. It is even more complex to compare such effects across countries, as they have very different baselines regarding unemployment and health/welfare systems.

Contemporary experts in comparative law are also very attuned to considering what is being compared in terms of law. It is usually not enough to just compare the “black-letter law” rules set out in primary or secondary legislation. (This is well illustrated by Australia’s public health orders restricting movement, which needed to be further “interpreted”, eg as to what constitutes permitted “exercise”, by health ministers and/or police commissioners.[5]) Nor is it even enough to consider case law interpreting legislation (for which anyway there has been hardly any in Australia relating to pandemic responses, unlike countries like France or Germany with constitutionally-protected civil liberties).[6] We also need to compare norms that are “law-like” in terms of origin (from or supported by the government) and impact. Our blog posting mentions Sweden and Japan as countries where social distancing and travel restrictions are being implemented effectively, even among growing death and infection rates respectively, largely without police-enforced criminal or administrative sanctions. A question for this inquiry is therefore what Australia’s more narrowly legalistic response says about how we operate and our values as a society.

Japan’s pandemic response, which mostly appeals to communitarian norms of self-restraint rather than having the government and police enforce strict legal rules (as in Australia, albeit with local differences), is reminiscent of John Haley’s argument that Japan even in modern times is governed quite effectively by Authority Without Power (OUP, 1991). Regarding limited “power”, through legal enforcement mechanisms, legal sociologist Takao Tanase’s Community and the Law (co-translated for Elgar, 2010) highlights that Japan remains acutely aware that rigorously extending a “modern” legal system into socio-economic ordering can often be a double-edged sword – even as it has embarked on another wave of justice system reform this century.[7]

Relatedly, a final general lesson from comparative law methodology is to be aware of who we are comparing, ie which legal systems. The US is often an outlier, in its law and related socio-economic system,[8] so this Inquiry and later analyses should probably not focus much on that country. Australian jurists (and others) also often compare the UK, as the “mother country” still especially for basic legal principles, but we now borrow more instrumentally and widely, so should keep looking at other (continental) European as well as Asian countries. In particular, we can learn from the comparatively effective yet diverse pandemic responses adopted in East Asia, as mentioned in our joint blog posting added to this Submission.

With these methodological principles in mind, one conclusion that emerges from a preliminary comparative analysis of the pandemic is the importance of “proportionality” and “subsidiarity” principles in regulatory responses (including in international law, such as investment treaties[9] – often examined recently in Australian parliamentary inquiries).[10] As in public and private health, it is risky to jump in quickly with stronger measures, especially where there are uncertainties; to minimise side-effects and unexpected consequences, it is usually better to begin with less intensive interventions. Even when we set a short-term public health goal (like COVID-19 infection or especially death rates), and re-set goals as evidence becomes available or circumstances evolve, the response should be proportionate. It should seek to minimise adverse longer-term health effects (eg physical or mental health problems or suicides from sustained social isolation) and other adverse socio-economic impact (including economic contraction impacting on funding for the health and related social welfare systems). To get the balance right often means devolving decision-making authority to lower levels in government, with better information about constraints and impacts: the subsidiarity principle, well-developed say within the EU.

Japan seems to have pursued quite a proportionate response, only increasing restraints after infections started to escalate in March, rather like Sweden (but the latter with a much higher death rate). Yet Japan shows less devolution, arguably due to quite a centralised polity, despite the important policy-making contributions by Tokyo and Osaka governors. As a federal system, Australia has displayed more subsidiarity. Prime Minister Morrison and the federal government did usefully innovate around the Constitution by creating a “national cabinet” including premiers or leaders of all states and territories, to help coordinate pandemic responses in light of public health and economic advice. But states and territories across this huge island continent have still differed in timing, scope and implementation of pandemic responses, linked to infection and death rates but also arguably politics (with more centre-left states intervening more, notably Victoria eg not allowing solo fishing as golf as permitted “exercise”). Responses also vary even at local council level (with eg some even in New South Wales closing off city beaches to surfers, even if not necessarily at risk of police closing them down for exceeding state-level restrictions on crowds).

By contrast, New Zealand, a much stricter lockdown was implemented nation-wide with no regional variation, aiming at “eradication” rather than “management” of the virus.[11] In hindsight so far, given similar health outcomes so far compared to Australia, the policy seems less proportionate given the necessarily much greater adverse socio-economic impact (even in a more agrarian economy). Perhaps the policy was influenced by the electoral cycle, with Prime Minister Ardern before the pandemic viewed as facing a close election in September this year[12] – leaders don’t want to go to the polls amidst escalating death rates. But the policy could be implemented nation-wide because New Zealand still probably has what former constitutional law professor (and later Prime Minister) Geoffrey Palmer criticised as “the fastest law in the West”.[13] New Zealand still has a unitary state with only one house of parliament and no constitutional bill of rights, and quickly enacted new lockdown legislation,[14] attracting some belated and muted criticism.[15]

Another conclusion from a preliminary comparative analysis is that countries and their residents often tend to display a curious nationalism regarding their respective pandemic responses. New Zealanders mostly still seem very happy with their government’s measures. Perhaps this reflects a psychological defence mechanism to deal with a tough lockdown, or an undercurrent of historical deference to authority (“conservative reformism”, as put in an analysis comparing Japan’s “reformist conservatism” in legal education),[16] or a sense of nationhood premised on New Zealand leading the world (eg first to give votes to women, expanding the welfare state over the 20^th century, then deregulating dramatically in the 1980s while going “nuclear-free”), or more risk aversion generally. Another factor is that New Zealanders may feel a bit threatened by bigger resource-rich Australia. On the last point, it would be interesting to see how say smaller countries with closely linked larger neighbours (like Korea and Japan, or Japan and China) perceive comparative responses. It would also be interesting to research how emigres perceive the pandemic responses in their new countries. Perhaps they are very optimistic and supportive because they want to subconsciously justify their immigration choice (Nottage, as a New Zealander who emigrated to Sydney two decades ago, may be an example), or instead very critical (perhaps linked to different disappointments in having moved country).

A further point that emerges from comparative analysis is that wider narratives can differ even towards a global crisis with many commonalities. Trying with difficulty to discern Australia’s narrative towards disasters during its summer of bushfires, Tom van Laer was struck that the British government typically deploys a narrative of “we can endure this”. That was developed first doing the Blitz of London during World War II, and revived to deal with IRA and later terrorist attacks. The narrative in Australia seems much less definite and consistent, and perhaps this is because the country (let alone New Zealand) has fortunately had few natural and other disasters. The narrative response by Japan’s leaders nowadays seems quite British, but is worth investigating further in comparison also with Asian countries. We should also track how narratives are evolving as, at least in Australia and some countries, the COVID-19 pandemic shifts from being primarily a health crisis to being an economic crisis. The related narrative tension was highlighted quite early in Australia by Prime Minister Morrison talking about the pandemic being about both “lives and livelihoods”, but we should track how a new story-line develops compared to the countries, as suggested towards the end of our joint blog posting.

In addition, drawing more directly on the disciplinary perspective of narratology (how people use stories to persuade each other), Parliament first would benefit from working more systematically and curatorially with academics in developing and supplying official narratives, props, sites and endorsements. Limiting the potential for contradictions, such collaborations increase the likelihood citizens will cope with returning from the pandemic in a similar way. Parliament too may creatively use the experience of the pandemic. For example, mementos can materialize the successful return from the pandemic to the everyday world, a transition of which to be proud.

Second, emotionally distress because of the pandemic experience means that there is a vital role for Parliament to play in intentional interventions designed to help citizens cope with distress step by step. It is one thing to assert that citizens can be convinced that distress is cathartic; research findings instead show transforming that distress into benefits turns out to be complex and complicated, and may require a professional approach. To clarify, a reference to theatre may be helpful. In professional productions, trained actors typically are the ones to build narrative worlds. In “method acting” they blend their primary, ordinary lives into the narrative worlds and let the narrative worlds embrace them. Meanwhile they self-consciously realize the adopted narrative world is important but nonetheless different from the “real” world, a realization which eases coping with distress. The ease of getting out of the narrative of our pandemic world therefore constitutes a skill that drama schools teaching method acting could train citizens to do too. Meanwhile, extraordinary experience providers at large can consider offering intentional interventions like consultations, courses, counselling, discussions, therapies or training.

Third, this Senate Committee inquiry speaks to impactful issues in experiential industries more broadly. For example, both COVID-19 and virtual reality involve narrative worlds, which may present a costly challenge. These parallels explain the rise in addiction to certain video games and particularly richer virtual reality (e.g., Zoom) to which citizens can return whenever they like, for as long or as short a time as desired. For them, these realities stand as continuous identity reaffirmation and renewal, which can occur in no other way. To stop is to diminish the self. By contrast, the pandemic world will not continue forever to place a mental or physical burden on citizens. They therefore must treat their recent extraordinary experience as a series of happenings that transported their self profoundly but temporarily. They then can process it with awareness and abandon. Resumption of disbelief in the everyday world lies close to the heart of such successful retainment of ordinary life. Citizens ought to analogise the pandemic reality as a temporary narrative world, and become (or be made) aware that their alternate reality can only contribute to transformation of the everyday world if they at least periodically withdraw and reflect. The government has many opportunities and resources to help their citizens in this endeavour.

[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/COVID-19

[2] See https://japaneselaw.sydney.edu.au/2020/05/covid-19-in-asia-and-beyond-we-are-story-characters-living-in-a-new-story-world/ and forthcoming via https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/coronavirus.

[3] As Prof Francis Fukuyama notes in a recent interview, the effectiveness of COVID-19 responses lie less in regime type, but rather whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state: https://supchina.com/2020/05/01/francis-fukuyama-interview-covid-19/

[4] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200516/p2g/00m/0na/010000c

[5] See generally our colleague A/Prof Andrew Edgar, https://auspublaw.org/2020/03/law-making-in-a-crisis-commonwealth-and-nsw-coronavirus-regulations/

[6] Compare eg Dr Holger Hestermeyer, http://constitutionnet.org/news/coronavirus-lockdown-measures-german-constitutional-court; and https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/coronavirus-le-conseil-d-etat-limite-le-pouvoir-des-maires-17-04-2020-2371882_23.php.

[7] Nottage, Luke R., Translating Tanase: Challenging Paradigms of Japanese Law and Society (May 27, 2006). Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, Vol.39, No. 4, pp. 755-778, 2009; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 07/17. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=921932

[8] Eg in comparative studies by Nottage on consumer law (especially product liability law), corporate governance, and contract law (many freely available via https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=488525) – all areas moreover that are now hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

[9] See eg Nottage, Luke R., Rebalancing Investment Treaties and Investor-State Arbitration: Two Approaches (June 14, 2016). Journal of World Investment and Trade, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 1015-1040, 2016; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 16/54. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2795396

[10] Nottage, Luke R. and Ubilava, Ana, Costs, Outcomes and Transparency in ISDS Arbitrations: Evidence for an Investment Treaty Parliamentary Inquiry (August 6, 2018). International Arbitration Law Review, Vol. 21, Issue 4, 2018; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 18/46. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3227401

[11] On the pros and cons of the eradication vs management strategies, from an interdisciplinary academic perspective, see generally the recent Go8 Report at https://go8.edu.au/research/roadmap-to-recovery

[12] Gary Hawke, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/12/20/ardern-stardust-and-a-closer-than-you-would-think-2020-election/

[13] Unbridled Power (1^st ed 1979), later edition reviewed here: http://www.nzlii.org/nz/journals/OtaLawRw/2005/10.html)

[14] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120572466/coronavirus-virus-laws-rushed-through-in-last-parliament-before-lockdown.

[15] https://thespinoff.co.nz/covid-19/28-04-2020/the-legal-basis-for-the-lockdown-may-not-be-as-solid-as-weve-been-led-to-believe/

[16] Nottage, Luke R., Reformist Conservatism and Failures of Imagination in Japanese Legal Education. Asia-Pacific Law & Policy Journal, Vol. 2, pp. 28-65, 2001. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=837045