NUS Law hosts 16th Asian Law Institute Conference

NUS Law successfully hosted the 16^th Asian Law Institute (ASLI) Conference from 11 to 12 June 2019 at the NUS Bukit Timah Campus. This is the fourth time that NUS Law is representing Singapore as the host institution for this conference.

Organised annually by ASLI, the conference provides a platform for legal academics and scholars from ASLI member institutions, as well as from Asia and beyond, to present their research and examine contemporary legal issues of interest to Asian jurisdictions. The theme for this year’s conference was “The Rule of Law and the Role of Law in Asia”.

The conference opened with speeches from Professor Simon Chesterman (Dean, NUS Law), Associate Professor Gary Bell (Director, ASLI) and Professor Mariko Igimi (Kyushu University) who represented the Chairman of the ASLI Board of Governors. This was followed by the keynote address from Mr K Shanmugam SC ’84, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law, who attended the conference as a Guest-of-Honour.

In his speech, Mr Shanmugam lauded the efforts of ASLI and NUS Law in developing expertise on Asian legal systems, and reiterated the Singapore Government’s support for such initiatives. With analysts forecasting Asia’s share of global gross domestic product to grow in the next decades, he explained that Singapore needs to tap into this area of opportunity to become an important legal centre in the region.

This year’s conference reached new heights with some 567 abstracts submitted, from which 358 were accepted. A total of 329 participants, including 236 presenters attended the conference, making it the largest ASLI conference ever.

The two-day conference covered legal issues related to a wide variety of subjects that included Constitutional and Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Human Rights, Information Technology Law, Corporate Law, Medical Law, Women and Law, among others.

As with previous conferences, an Open Forum was organised to provide an opportunity for the Director of ASLI to update the members on latest developments and invite conference attendees to ask questions and share their opinions. Associate Professor Dan Puchniak (NUS Law), Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law (AsJCL), also gave an update on the journal and its publications. The forum was followed by the AsJCL – Best Paper Presentation “How Global is the Common Law? A Comparative Study of Asian Common Law Systems – Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore”, by Professor Kwai Hang Ng (University of California) and Dr Brynna Jacobson (University of San Francisco).

The conference came to a close in the evening of 12 June 2019 with a lecture by Professor Antony Anghie (NUS Law) and a presentation on the 17^th ASLI Conference by Professor (Dr) Ranbir Singh (Vice-Chancellor, National Law University (NLU), Delhi).

The 17^th ASLI Conference will be held next year at NLU Delhi from 3 to 4 June 2020.