Keynote Speaker: Dr Rosalie Balkin AO
Opening Plenary, Monday 24 May, 11:00am - 12:30pm (AEST)
Dr Rosalie Balkin is the Secretary-General of the Comite Maritime International (CMI). She was previously Director of Legal Affairs and External Relations, IMO (1998-2013) and Assistant Secretary-General, IMO (2011-2013). Apart from her role as Legal Advisor to the Organization, she was Secretary to IMO’s Legal Committee and Executive Secretary to IMO’s governing bodies (Council and Assembly). Prior to joining IMO, she was Legal Adviser to the Commonwealth Ombudsman (Australia) (1982-1987) and Assistant Secretary in the Office of International Law (Australia) (1987-1998). During the latter period, Rosalie was Australia’s Head of Delegation to IMO’s Legal Committee and in 1993, she was elected Vice-Chair of that Committee, a position she held until “crossing the floor” in 1998 to join the IMO Secretariat. Rosalie started her legal career in academia and has held various positions in a number of universities, including Wits University (South Africa), Melbourne and New South Wales Universities (Australia) and Cambridge University (UK). She has published extensively in Public International Law and International Maritime Law and most recently was Academic Coordinator of “The IMLI Treatise on Global Ocean Governance”, Vol III: IMO and Global Ocean Governance, published by OUP in 2018. She is also the author (with Prof JLR Davis) of “The Law of Torts”, now in its fifth edition. Rosalie was recently part of a five-member Compulsory Conciliation Commission established under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention which facilitated the Governments of Timor Leste and Australia reaching agreement on their long-disputed maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea. In the 2018 Australia Day list, she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to maritime law through roles with a range of organisations, to the improvement of global shipping transport safety and standards, and to education as an academic and author.
SPECIAL SESSIONS
In this first fully virtual AsianSIL conference, we have introduced a format designed to mimic the small group conversations one might have, for example, over a meal, at a traditional conference. There will be 10 of these In Conversation with sessions, each with an eminent member of the Society's Advisory Council.
To keep the numbers within comfortable margins and to allow everyone an opportunity to participate, we will limit the number of participants.
The maximum number of In Conversation with sessions for which you can register is three. If you find that you will not be able to participate after all, please be community-spirited and cancel from that session so that someone else can have the opportunity to participate.
Please note that your registration for the main conference does not include these In Conversation with sessions. After you have registered for the main conference, you will receive a separate email inviting you to register for In Conversation with sessions. Those who register successfully will receive a personalized zoom link before their session.
meet the SPECIAL speakers
Simon Chesterman is Dean and Provost’s Chair Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore. He is also Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and Co-President of the Law Schools Global League.
Professor Chesterman is the author or editor of twenty-one books, including We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law (CUP, 2021); Law and Practice of the United Nations (with Ian Johnstone and David M. Malone, OUP, 2016); One Nation Under Surveillance (OUP, 2011); You, the People (OUP, 2004); and Just War or Just Peace? (OUP, 2001).Richard Anderson Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Reseach Accoiate, Orfalea Center for Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and Chair of Global Law, Law Faculty, Queen Mary University London. He is the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories and a member of the Nation editorial board.
He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance. He has recently published his political memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim.
Professor Surya P. Subedi QC is an international jurist. He is Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds, a member of the Institut de Droit International, and a Barrister in London. He holds a DCL and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He is Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Asian Journal of International Law. He was the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia (2009-2015). He has written a number of works on the theory and practice of international law and acted as a counsel in a number of cases before the international courts and tribunals, including the ICJ and the ICSID.
Professor Lucy Reed is an arbitrator based in New York, specializing in investor-State and complex international commercial disputes. She is President of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) and a Vice President of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre Court, having formerly served as a Vice President of the ICC Court and President of the American Society of International Law, the Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration. From 2016 through 2019, Ms. Reed was the Director of the Centre for International Law and Professor of Practice on the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore. In her previous positions, she was a partner with the international law firm Freshfields, where she headed the international arbitration group, and a lawyer with the US Department of State Legal Adviser’s Office, where she served as US Agent to the Iran-US Claims Tribunal.
Judge Hisashi Owada was a Judge and former President of the International Court of Justice until 2018, when he resigned from the Court and is now a visiting professor at Tokyo University. Before being appointed to this post, he was professor of international law and organization at Waseda University in Japan, and President of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. As professor of international law, Judge Owada has taught at University of Tokyo for 25 years and more recently at Waseda University, Japan. He has also taught for many years at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and New York University Law School.
He is currently on the faculty of the New York University Global Law School and honorary professor at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is a member of l’Institut de Droit International. Judge Owada is the author of numerous writings on international legal affairs.
Professor Borhan Uddin Khan is currently a Professor in the Department of Law, University of Dhaka and Advisor, Adjunct Professor and head of the Department of Law, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). He is a former Dean of the Faculty of Law, (2006-2010) and the former Chairman of the Department of Law (2015-2017), University of Dhaka. Borhan is one of the founder members of the Asian Society of International Law. He is currently a member of its Board of Advisors and a former Vice President (2013-2015). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Asian Journal of International Law.
Judge Jin-Hyun Paik is a member of International Tribunal for Law of Seas since 6 March 2009; re-elected as from 1 October 2014; President of the Tribunal 2017-2020; Member of the Special Chamber formed to deal with the Dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in the Atlantic Ocean 2015-2017; President of the Special Chamber formed to deal with the Dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius/Maldives).
Judge XUE Hanqin is Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (since 2010) and was Vice-President (2018-2021). Judge Xue has held many distinguished positions, including those of Vice-President and Council member of the Chinese Society of International Law (1997-2013); Professor of International Law at Wuhan University (since 2008); and President of the Asian Society of International Law (2009-2011). She was a Member of the International Law Commission (2001-2010) and the Chairman of the Commission (2010); and a Member of the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (since 2014). Before being elected to the ICJ, Judge Xue served as Director-General, Law and Treaty Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China (1999-2003). She has published numerous articles and books on international law, both in Chinese and English.
Professor Edith Brown Weiss is a lawyer and legal scholar, known for her contributions on International Law, specifically in the areas of public international, environmental, and water resources law. She is Honorary Member of the Indian Society of International Law. She also delivered the General Course on Public International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law in summer 2017. In September 2002 she was appointed to a 5-year term on the 3-member Inspection Panel of the World Bank and from 2003-2007 served full-time as the Chairperson of the Inspection Panel, an appointment at the Vice-Presidential level. Since January 2012, she has served as a Judge on the International Monetary Fund’s Administrative Tribunal. She has been a Judge on the Inter-American Development Bank’s Administrative Tribunal from 2014 – 2020 and was President of the Tribunal in 2018. Professor Brown Weiss is also a member of the nine-person United Nations Environment Programme’s International Advisory Council on Environmental Justice.
Professor B. S. Chimni is a legal scholar and academic who is presently distinguished professor of international law member at Jindal Global Law School. His areas of expertise include international law, international trade law and international refugee law. He has been chairperson of the Centre for International Legal Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He had been a vice chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. He has been a visiting professor at the International Center for Comparative Law and Politics, Tokyo University, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, visiting fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Center, York University, Canada.
Contact Us
For any enquiries, please email AsianSIL2021@adfa.edu.au.