Foreign Judgments Project Lead presents findings of phase one

On Monday 8 April 2019, Dr Adeline Chong, Project Lead for ABLI’s Foreign Judgments Project, presented the findings of the first phase of the project at a Seminar on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Asia, organised by the Law Society of Singapore.

Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Asia Law Society of Singapore Seminar by Dr Adeline Chong 8 April 2019 22 slides

The Seminar was described as follows:

Initiatives such as the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 and China’s Belt and Road initiative will no doubt increase the amount of cross-border transactions, both within and with ASEAN. The increase in crossborder transactions will lead inevitably to a concomitant rise in cross-border litigation. In this regard, the enforcement of foreign judgments has a particular significance. The greater portability of judgments within ASEAN and its major trade partners will facilitate cross-border transactions by lowering transaction costs and associated legal friction among jurisdictions.

It was against this backdrop that the Asian Business Law Institute (ABLI)’s project on Foreign Judgments in Asia was launched. This project considers the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments rules in each of the 10 ASEAN Member States and 5 of ASEAN’s major trade partners, namely, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, and the best means of harmonising the rules. The seminar will draw on the work done on the ABLI project and consider the ways in which the various laws are similar to, or differ from, each other. The further issue of whether the differences can be surmounted will also be examined.

The program was as follows: