Selena Chin May 
CHIONG

 
FULL BIOGRAPHY

In Residence

2 May 2022 to 1 August 2022

Selena graduated from National University of Singapore in 1994 with Bachelor of Laws, Second Upper (Honours) Class. She served her pupillage at the firm Lee & Lee where she also spent the first few years of her post-graduate professional career. In subsequent years, she practised in large firms like Allen & Gledhill and Yeo-Leong & Peh. Selena’s interest is in corporate and commercial law, particularly the law of contracts and contractual dispute resolution.  Her task in research seeks to anticipate judicial responses to contractual disputes in the current turbulence of commercial contracts upheavals wrought by COVID. The methodology adopted is the investigation of judicial responses and attitudes (and legislative responses, where applicable) in past global crises of equivalent magnitude. More specifically, her research seeks to answer the question if the Singapore courts and  those of other Common Law jurisdiction would take the initiative to exercise judicial creativity and  discretion in the interpretation of Force Majeure clauses, in the application of the Doctrine of Frustration of Contracts and the legal principle of Supervening Illegality in the adjudication of contractual disputes arising out of COVID-19 that have and will come before them, thereby departing from the time-honoured principles of stare decisis and if so, in what ways,on what legal bases and to what extent?  An answer– or even a range of probable answers- to this question would empower contracting parties to make informed –or at least, the least financially painful – decisions going forward as the pandemic shows no sign of abating.

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