After Australia’s general election held on 18 May 2019, the prospects for investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) and therefore investment chapters in free trade agreements (FTAs) remain unclear not only for Australia but also the wider Asia-Pacific region. This posting provides some backdrop and reiterates a proposal for a bipartisan (and bi-national) approach by Australia (especially with New Zealand) to more actively promote a “permanent investment court” (or at least some of its core features) as a compromise alternative to conventional ISDS, for its future treaties as well as in reviewing older ones. This should be not just in pending FTA negotiations with the European Union, which now already insists on such a court for resolving investor-state disputes (aiming also to develop a multilateral investment court), but also in (re)negotiations with other Asia-Pacific states. A version of this posting is with the East Asia Forum blog too.
This proposal will be tabled and hopefully discussed at the upcoming seminar at the University of Hong Kong, on 15 July, as part of a joint project over 2019 with USydney on “New Frontiers in International Arbitration for the Asia-Pacific Region“.
Category: Public policy and politics
Review – Rieko Kage “Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia and Europe”
[Draft presentation / review for an authors-meet-readers session at the Asian Law & Society Association conference, 29 Nov – 1 Dec, Bond University. Remarks / asides in [[square brackets] and/or hyperlinked references, plus some edits, were adjusted afterwards for a final version being published in (2019) Asian Journal of Law and Society]
(Cambridge University Press 2017) xiii + 264 pages, ISDN 978-1-107-19469-4 Hardback
Reviewed by: Luke Nottage
University of Sydney Law School & Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL)
This is a fascinating, compellingly argued, carefully researched and beautifully written empirical analysis of how the relative strength of “new left” against traditional right and old left political parties impacts differently on the introduction and design of “jury” or “lay judge” systems since the 1990s in East Asia and beyond. Kage’s mixed-method study convincingly shows how such political dynamics result in different degrees to which power is transferred away from professional judges and towards lay people being involved in adjudicating criminal matters. This transfer of power, which reduces judicial independence vis-à-vis the public (by involving them in adjudication) during an era where independence has often been growing vis-à-vis politicians, is most extensive in Spain (with a lay judge system was introduced in 1995), quite extensive in Japan (with the saiban’in system introduced in 2004, although not implemented until 2009), less extensive in South Korea (2007), and least extensive in Taiwan (comparing a “lay observer” Bill submitted in 2012). Key benchmarks for such a comparative assessment (summarized in Table 1.2 at p17) are whether professional judges retain powers to determine which cases end up being heard by lay judges, and voting rules allow lay judges to dominate binding decisions (p15).
(Un)Coddling the Mind in the USA and Australia [… and Japan?]
Written by: Karl Faase (CEO, Olive Tree Media) and Luke Nottage
[Below is our review, published in abridged form on 25 October 2018 by Eternity News (without hyperlinks and under a different title), for an important new book entitled “Coddling the American Mind“. The book, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, argues that a new generation is emerging in the USA that believes three “untruths” contrary to the lessons from mainstream psychology nowadays as well as from the wisdom literatures from many cultures:
1. What doesn’t kill me makes me weaker (so: always keep me “safe”!)
2. Always trust my feelings (so: don’t engage my rational brain!)
3. The world is a battle been good and bad people (so: don’t look for good within everyone!)
Our review suggests that drivers of these untruths are also evident in Australia, but (so far) to a lesser degree. I think the drivers may be even weaker in Japan, with these three untruths still contrary to traditional wisdom there. But that further comparison would be an interesting topic for future research.]
++++++++
Continue reading “(Un)Coddling the Mind in the USA and Australia [… and Japan?]”
“Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation” (2018) – Book Launch [cont’d]
[See here for the first half of this book launch / review.]
“Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars and Healing” (Yasuko Claremont, ed, Routledge 2018) – Book Launch
[These are notes prepared for my launch of this new book by a friend and former colleague, on Thursday 5 July 2018 during the biennial Asian Studies Association of Australia. The second half is posted on 1 August 2018.]
I am honoured and humbled – in three ways – to launch this latest book by my former colleague at USydney’s Japanese Studies Department, Dr Yasuko Claremont, which examines “Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation”.
I am humbled as it is the first time to launch a book … which makes me feel a little old!
But I am also humbled because Yasuko puts me to shame for her productivity; since retiring in 2015, she has also produced two other books. This evidence of “life after retirement” makes me feel young again!
I am further humbled because this book makes me realize how much I still need to learn about history and society in Japan (and indeed in Australia – the book’s major comparative reference point, along with Korea and China / Taiwan). Although I research and teach Japanese law “in context”, I tend to delve more into the law than the context. Yet both are deeply intertwined, and law in fact crops up in several chapters throughout this book.
Australian Perspectives on International Commercial Dispute Resolution for the 21st Century: A Symposium
https://brill.com/abstract/title/36129Guest blog written by: Nobumichi Teramura (UNSW PhD in Law candidate)
Ongoing dramatic geopolitical transitions in the world have inevitably impacted on the international business environment of the Asia-Pacific region. This requires Australia and other countries in the region to re-examine their legal infrastructure for transnational business disputes. Convergence and divergence of legal systems of competing and sometimes cooperating states in the Asia-Pacific require the Australian government and other stakeholders to address unprecedented legal complexities in private to private, private to public, and public to public commercial dispute resolution.
On 19 April 2018, the Sydney Centre for International Law (SCIL) at the University of Sydney Law School organised a post-ICCA symposium: “International Commercial Dispute Resolution for the 21st Century: Australian Perspectives”. The symposium, the second recently with the University of Western Australia (UWA) Law School and also supported by Transnational Dispute Management (TDM), brought together leading experts in international arbitration, investment law and international business law from all over the world. They examined broad and perhaps increasingly overlapping fields such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in a changing legal and political environment, cross-border litigation in the Asian region, other international commercial dispute resolution mechanisms (arbitration and mediation), and inter-state dispute settlement.
Guest Blog – Public Participation in Legal Decision-Making
Prof Valerie Hans of Cornell Law School recently convened a fascinating online Forum comparing issues involving public participation in legal decision-making, especially but not limited to (quasi-)jury systems that have been (re)introduced into Asia-Pacific countries like Japan and Korea.
With kind permission from Prof Annelise Riles, well-known for her studies in legal anthropology and comparative legal theory with respect to Japan and Asia, we reproduced below Valerie’s opening questions for the (usually closed) Forum convened by the Meridien180 initiative. That is followed by my brief Japan-focused posting in response to some of those questions as well as some intervening postings and topics raised by other Meridien180 members from around the Asia-Pacific region.
As explained on the website for Meridien180, it is:
a multilingual forum for transformative leadership. Founded in 2012, Meridian 180’s strength comes from its membership—800+ thought leaders from academia, business, and the public sector from 29 different countries. With a center of gravity in the Pacific Rim, Meridian 180 builds the intellectual, social, and political infrastructure required to address the crises of today and tomorrow.
Meridian 180 is a partnership of Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture at Cornell Law School, Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea, the Institute for Social Science at the University of Tokyo and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The director of Meridian 180 is Annelise Riles, the Jack G. Clarke ’52 Professor of Far East Legal Studies at Cornell Law School.
Hopefully a summary of the Forum discussions will made publically available. I certainly hope to draw on its many comparative insights when helping to set readings and marking essays by USydney students who are always intrigued by Japan’s quasi-jury system in the criminal justice class in the ANJeL-supported “Kyoto Seminar on Japanese Law“. That class was last taught in February 2018 by Profs Makoto Ibusuki and Dimitri Vanoverbeke.
Continue reading “Guest Blog – Public Participation in Legal Decision-Making”
NZ renounces ISDS: Deja vu?
we have written to leaders in both New Zealand and Australia recommending a shift towards introducing an EU-style two-tier investment court model in lieu of traditional ISDS, as a compromise way forward
The new Labour-led coalition government in New Zealand announced this month that it would resist investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in future Free Trade Agreements or investment treaties.
This outcome and local political circumstances bear some remarkable parallels with the situation in Australia over 2011-2013, when the centre-left Gillard Labor coalition government adopted a similar stance until the new centre-right government resumed the policy including ISDS on a case-by-case assessment. Australia was then able to agree to major bilateral FTAs with China and Korea, as well as to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The [unfootnoted] posting below with Amokura Kawharu from UAuckland, a version of which will be published in the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, elaborates on these developments. We note how New Zealand nonetheless subsequently reached agreement in principle on a revised TPP, but will face challenges maintaining a wholly anti-ISDS stance in the ongoing (ASEAN+6) Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiations. As a compromise way forward, we have written letters to leaders in New Zealand and Australia suggesting the substitution of an EU-style investment court mechanism.
For more background and our main paper referred to below, please see:
Kawharu, Amokura and Nottage, Luke R., Models for Investment Treaties in the Asian Region: An Underview (February 21, 2017). Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2017 Forthcoming; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 16/87. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2845088
Reforming Product Safety Law: Good and Bad News from the Australian Consumer Law Review
Written by: Luke Nottage and Catherine Niven
In 2008, as consumer confidence in Australia took a big hit from the Global Financial Crisis, the Productivity Commission published a report advising the federal Treasurer to lead a belated “re-harmonisation” of consumer protection law. The State and Territory governments agreed to enact substantive provisions mirroring those legislated by the federal Government, thus creating a uniform “Australian Consumer Law” (ACL) in force nation-wide from 2011.
This reform project was mainly “sold” as saving transaction costs for businesses domestically, but also in their dealings with overseas markets that have also been “trading up” to higher standards of consumer protection law (including now ASEAN). As such, for example, all Australian jurisdictions introduced general provisions voiding unfair contract terms along the model adopted by the European Union (EU) in 1993, following the lead of Victoria in 2003. More directly impacting on consumer product safety, the ACL added a novel reporting requirement that suppliers notify the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about serious product-related accidents, introduced already in 2001 by the EU – albeit in more expansive form.
In addition, the Australian governments also agreed to review the operation of the ACL after five years. In March 2017, with little fanfare, officials in “Consumer Affairs Australia and New Zealand” (CAANZ) released a Final Report including recommendations for ACL reform. They include mixed blessings for enhancing consumer safety law.
Three Japanese Law Panels at the JSAA Conference, UWollongong, 27-29 June 2017
Thanks to Carol Lawson (ANU PhD candidate and former ANJeL Coordinator), with A/Prof Stacey Steele (UMelbourne and ANJeL Program Convenor for Judicial Visitors), for sharing below descriptions for their own upcoming conference panel (covering new developments in bankruptcy, privacy law and the legal profession) as well as panels on constitutionalism (timely also in light of the discussion over “informal amendment” of the Article 9 peace clause), and Japanese law and social change (considered also in a book review forthcoming in the Journal of Japanese Studies).
ANJeL members and others are encouraged to register before Friday 23 June for this biennial Japanese Studies of Australia conference held the ensuing week at the University of Wollongong.
Continue reading “Three Japanese Law Panels at the JSAA Conference, UWollongong, 27-29 June 2017”