Emeritus Professor Sornarajah delivers Distinguished Lecture on Resistance and Change in International Investment Law

On 23 September, NUS Law Emeritus Professor M. Sornarajah delivered a lecture on Resistance and Change in International Investment Law: The Validity of a Theory of Change in International Law, at the Wee Chong Jin Moot Court located in NUS Law’s Bukit Timah Campus.

Emeritus Professor M. Sornarajah engaged the audience both before and during his lecture on international investment law moderated by Professor Lynette Chua, Vice Dean (Research), including with NUS Law Dean Andrew Simester (first row, centre), legal professionals and members of the legal community such as Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy (first row, left).

In an earlier book, Resistance and Change in the International Law on Foreign Investment, he advanced the theory that the law in this area is made by power but undergoes change when resistance to its rules set in. He affirmed that later developments confirm the validity of the theory. He argued in a forthcoming book that this theory applies to other areas of international law. The areas chosen are the use of force, the liability of multinational corporations, extraterritorial jurisdiction and climate change. The study shows that a general theory of change in international law resulting from the articulation of rules by hegemonic powers and resistance to them has validity.

Professor Lynette Chua, Vice Dean (Research) and NUS Law Dean Andrew Simester with Emeritus Professor M. Sornarajah and his wife. 

About Emeritus Professor M. Sornarajah

M. Sornarajah is Emeritus Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore. He was CJ Koh Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore. He was the Tunku Abdul Rahman Professor of International Law at the University of Malaya at Kuala Lumpur. He was Head of the Law School of the University of Tasmania, Australia.

He studied law at the University of Ceylon (LLB, First Class), the Yale Law School (LLM) the London School of Economics (LLM) and King’s College, London (PhD, LLD). He was Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law, Cambridge and at the Max Planck Institut fur Offentliches Auslandisches Recht at Heidelburg, Germany. He was Visiting Professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto (where he delivered the Pierre Genest Distinguished Lecture); Carleton University, Ottawa (where he delivered the Simon Reisman Lecture); the University of Malaya (where he delivered the Tun Suffian Lecture); the Centre for Petroleum and Natural Resources Law at the University of Dundee, Scotland; American University at Washington DC; the World Trade Institute of the Universities of Berne and Neuchatel, Switzerland; Kyushu University, Japan; the Xiamen Academy of International Law, China; Xi’An Jiatao University, China; Beijing School of Transnational Law, China; Fundacio Gerulaitis Vargas Law School, Sao Paolo, Brazil; the Human Rights Centre of the London School of Economics; the National Law School, Bangalore, India; and at the Georgetown Centre for Transnational Legal Studies, London. He lectured at the Supreme Court Judges Retreat at the National Judicial Institute, Bhopal, India.

He has published extensively in the areas of public international law and international investment law.