Letter from the Dean 2021

Letter from the Dean May Day, 2021

Dear members and friends of the CityU Law community, I am writing to share with you our School’s new developments and achievements. In the latest THES and QS Rankings for Law, CityU is ranked 31 and 70 respectively. This is a strong ranking that reaffirms our efforts in education and research, and shows that our graduates are highly sought after in the local and overseas job markets.

Faculty Substantiation, Promotion, and New Hires Much of the good work that the School of Law does is only possible through the effort of our academic and teaching faculty. I am therefore pleased to congratulate my colleagues who received substantiation and promotion in 2020.

Prof. Kelvin LOW has acquired academic tenure starting from January 2021. Kelvin’s interests focus primarily on property law and trust law.

His publications have been cited by courts in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore as well as law commissions or other reform bodies including those in Australia, England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.

Dr. Lauren Yu-Hsin LIN was promoted as tenured Associate Professor in July 2020. YuHsin’s research interests focus on empirical and economic analysis of corporate law and capital markets regulation. She has published with leading academic journals and has been interviewed as a corporate law expert by major media, including The Economist and Bloomberg.

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Dr. Daniel PASCOE was promoted to tenured Associate Professor of the School of Law in July 2020. Daniel’s research interests include comparative criminal law, Southeast Asian law, Islamic Law and transitional justice. He has published widely in academic journals and is the author of two books. He contributes regular opinion pieces within the international media on issues of crime, punishment and pardon in Asia.

In line with our ambition of becoming a leading global law school, attracting strong academics to the School is of utmost importance. The past year saw a number of promising young faculty joining the School.

Dr. FANG Meng Mandy joined the School as Assistant Professor in July 2020. Mandy held post-doctoral fellowships at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and National University of Singapore. She obtained her PhD from CUHK, LLM from University College London and Bachelor of Management and Bachelor of Laws degrees from Chongqing University. Her research interests include international economic law, World Trade Organization Law, climate change governance, energy law and international environmental law.

Dr. JING Hui joined the School as Assistant Professor in October 2020. His teaching and research interests encompass equity and trust, property, intellectual property law, and charity law.

Jing completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne. Prior to his PhD, Jing obtained his masters degree (by research) in Intellectual Property Law from Peking University and his LLB from the China University of Political Science and Law. Before joining academia, he worked at the China National Foreign Trade Financial & Leasing Company and the Beijing Office of Zhong Lun Law Firm between 2014 and 2017.

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Dr. LANDO Massimo joined the School as Assistant Professor in August 2020. Massimo completed his PhD and LLM at the University of Cambridge. He also obtained an LLB from the University of Milan and a GDL from the University of Law. Before joining the School, he was Associate Legal Officer at the International Court of Justice, working in the chambers of Judge Dalveer Bhandari and Judge ad hoc Charles N. Brower (2017–2020). He previously interned at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Massimo’s academic research is in general international law, with a focus on the law of the sea and the settlement of international disputes.

Research Excellence Faculty continue to publish books, journal articles, and conference papers, and a representative selection of books written and edited by faculty is listed below.

Handbook of International Investment Law and Policy (4 volumes) by Julien Chaisse, Leïla Choukroune and Sufian Jusoh (eds) (New York: Springer, 2021) 1,600p.

Wine Law and Policy-From National Terroirs to a Global Market by Julien Chaisse, Fernando Dias Simoes and Danny Friedmann (Boston: Brill, 2021) 807p.

Civil Case Management in the Twenty-First Century: Court Structures Still Matter by Peter C.H. Chan and C.H. (Remco) van Rhee (Singapore: Springer, 2021)

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Impact Research should have a tangible and positive effect on society and I’m pleased that my colleagues’ research has had an impact on the wider society that we are an integral part of.

Prof. Julien CHAISSE was awarded “The 10th Smit-Lowenfeld prize” for his article titled “Cybersecurity and the Protection of Digital Assets – Assessing the Role of International Investment Law and Arbitration” in Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, by the International Arbitration Club of New York in Jan 2021. Julien is serving as President and Chair of the Asia Pacific FDI Network (APFN), which is the most important organization in the region that focuses on researching foreign direct investment and facilitating cooperation among over 100 scholars and 50 institutions, and was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Academy of International Dispute Resolution & Professional Negotiation (AIDRN).

Julien Chaisse

Prof. Thomas CROFTS was invited to participate in the Law Commission for England and Wales’ Academic Roundtable on Intimate Image Abuse in 2020.

His work on law reform in relation to image based abuse and sexting and young people (including Crofts, Lee, McGovern and Milivojevic, Sexting and Young People (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Crofts and Kirchengast, “A Ladder Approach to Criminalising Revenge Pornography” (2019) 83 Journal of Criminal Law 87; Salter and Crofts, “Responding to revenge porn: Challenges to online legal impunity” in Comella and Tarrant (eds); New views on pornography: Sexuality, Politics and the Law (Praeger, 2015)) was cited throughout the Law Commission's Consultation Paper No 253, Intimate Image Abuse: A consultation paper (Feb 2021).

Thomas Crofts

Research conducted by Prof. LIU Qiao and Prof.

WANG Jiangyu has been extensively relied upon by the Department of Justice (DoJ) of the HKSAR in its official proposal submitted to the Legislative Council (Legco) with a view to drafting and enacting legislation to allow Hong Kong to join the United Nations Convention on International Sale of Goods (CISG), which currently only permits sovereign states to be contracting parties. The DoJ proposal adopted Liu Qiao a range of the analyses and recommendations Wang Jiangyu made in the Liu/Wang submission, which was a response to the DoJ’s call for public consultation to solicit views on the application of the CISG in Hong Kong. It is expected that the proposed Ordinance will be enacted in due course. The DoJ’s proposal to Legco is available at https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr20-21/english/panels/ajls/papers/ajls20210322cb4648-3-e.pdf.

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Prof. WANG Jiangyu’s article, “Dispute Settlement in the Belt and Road Initiative: Progress, Issues, and Future Research Agenda”, was selected as one of the ten best papers in the “Comparative Law” collection of the Best of 2020 Law Journals from Oxford University Press. The paper was the introductory piece to a special issue entitled “Dispute Settlement in the Belt and Road Initiative” published in The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 8, Issue 1 (2020). Jiangyu’s chapter, “China’s Impact on Hong Kong’s Position as an International Financial Centre: The Legal and Policy Dimensions” (in David C. Donald, Jefferson P. Vanderwolk and Jiangyu Wang (eds), A Financial Centre for Two Empires: Hong Kong’s Corporate, Securities and Tax Laws in Its Transition From Britain to China, Cambridge University Press, 2014) was cited in the 2020 Annual Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, published in December 2020.

Dr. Surya DEVA was invited to join the Core Advisory Group on Business and Human Rights of India’s National Human Rights Commission in February 2021. He appeared as an expert witness before the Canadian House of Commons’ Subcommittee on International Human Rights (March 2021). He also gave the keynote address at (i) UNICEF Regional Management Meeting on “Reimagining business engagement in the context of a pandemic” held on 3 December 2020, (ii) Women20 @ G20 meeting on “Business and human rights: A gender perspective” held on 29 January 2021, and (iii) Council of Europe Steering Committee for Human Rights’ workshop on “Human Rights and Business: A framework for addressing environmental protection challenges” held on 27 April 2021.

Surya Deva

Dr. Lauren Yu-Hsin LIN’s work has recently been cited by the Court of Chancery of Delaware in In re CBS Corporation Stockholder Class Action and Derivative Litigation (Consolidated C.A. No. 2020-0111-JRS). The lawsuit arises from CBS’s $30 billion acquisition of Viacom in December 2019.

Lauren Yu-Hsin Lin

Dr. Stephenson CHOW’s co-authored book chapter, entitled 'Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability: Participation in Cultural Life, Recreation, Leisure and Sport’ in I Bantekas, D Anastasiou and M Stein (eds), Commentary on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Oxford University Press, 2018), was cited by the Australian government's Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability in its research report on "The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: An Assessment of Australia's Level of Compliance".

Stephenson Chow

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Dr. HE Tianxiang was invited to join the Editorial Board of The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (Oxford University Press). Tianxiang is also an Elected Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL).

He Tianxiang

Mr. Jack BURKE was appointed as the Secretary of the Australasian Professional Legal Education Council on 5 February 2021.

Jack Burke

Prof. TAN Cheng Han, SC’s work was cited in a number of Singapore cases including by the Singapore Court of Appeal in Alphire Group Pte Ltd v Law Chau Loon [2020] SGCA 50 and Ma Hongjin v SCP Holdings Pte Ltd [2020] SGCA 106.

He also successfully represented the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore before the Competition Appeals Board in Appeal No. 1 of 2018 in relation to the sale of Uber’s Southeast Asian business to Grab Holdings [2020] SGCAB 2; and in Appeal Nos. 2, 3, 5 and 6 of 2018 in relation to the sale and distribution of fresh chicken products.

Tan Cheng Han

Professor Tan was also elected as the founding President of the Asian Law Schools Association in February 2021.

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Grants Our School continues to develop a strong culture of grant capture which is a further indication of the quality of faculty.

Details of the competitive grants are as follows:

Prof. Julien CHAISSE, Principal Investigator, Anatomy of Hong Kong’s International Trade Law: Logic and Consequences of Unilateralism, Bilateralism, and Multilateralism, General Research Fund (GRF), HK$952,000.

Prof. WAN Wai Yee, Principal Investigator, Hong Kong Insolvency and Restructuring Law and Policy in Times of COVID-19 and Beyond, Collaborative Research Fund, HK$3,114,629 [co-PIs are Kelvin Low (CityU law), Phyllis Mo (CityU accounting), Yaxuan Qi (CityU finance), Linda Li (CityU political science), Kelvin Kwok (HKU law) and Alwin Chan (HKU law)].

Dr. DING Chunyan, Principal Investigator, Two Tales of Legal Mobilization: NGO-led and Procuratorate-led Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China, General Research Fund (GRF), HK$794,883.

Dr. Rebecca ONG, Principal Investigator, Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: An Empirical Investigation into Factors Influencing the Adoption of e-Health Record Sharing in Hong Kong, General Research Fund (GRF), HK$489,500.

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Dr. Stephenson CHOW, Principal Investigator, Accommodating the Needs of Persons with Disabilities in Policies concerning Public Health Emergencies: Law, Ethics and Practice, Hong Kong Government's Policy and Innovation Coordination Office (PICO), Public Policy Research (PPR) Fund, HK$500,000.

Dr. HE Tianxiang, Principal Investigator, The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence to Copyright Law and the Legislative Response: A Comparative Study Between Japan and China, Sumitomo Foundation Research Grant 2020, ¥680,000.

Student Achievements Our students are at the heart of everything we do and I’m very pleased to see them develop during their time at the School.

“For Our Future Scholarship” Ms. HSEUH Hiu Yu, our final year LLB student, was awarded the “For Our Future Scholarship” by the Greater Bay Area Homeland Youth Community Foundation for her achievements in academic performance and personal development as well as community service.

All winners receive a scholarship of HK$50,000.

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Mooting Competitions Our students continue to do well in international mooting competitions.

The 2020 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition (Hong Kong Regional Round), 15 March 2020   

Hardy C. Dillard Award (Best Combined Memorials) Hong Kong Regional Round - Best Applicant Memorial Hong Kong Regional Round - Best Respondent Memorial

CityU Jessup 2020 team

The 2021 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition (Hong Kong Regional Rounds), 2728 February 2021, and International Rounds, 15 March – 17 April 2021 (held virtually)  

Best Applicant Memorial, Hong Kong Regional Rounds Second Best Oralist, Hong Kong Regional Rounds (SO Cyrena Heng Yee)

Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition 2020 For the 2019/2020 competition the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of the oral round of the competition, set down for Bejing, which normally determines the winner. In 2020 the winner of the Memorials competition was automatically the winner of the Asia-Pacific Zone of the competition.   

Ranked 8th out of 33 teams Ranked 9th for applicant memorial Ranked 7th for respondent memorial

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The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot (Vis Vienna) and its sister moot, the Vis East, held virtually during March – April in both 2020 and 2021

CityU Vis 2021 team

Vis East and Vis Vienna 2021 oralists

Our CityU team performed outstandingly in both the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot (Vis Vienna) and its sister moot, the Vis East. Both the Vis Vienna and the Vis East were held virtually in 2020 and 2021. The Vis Moot is a competition built around a fictional arbitration.

Teams are required first to prepare two written memoranda, for the claimant and respondent, and subsequently to act as either party’s advocates in the oral rounds.

In the Vis East 2020, the CityU team was the Winner of the Fali Nariman Award (Best Memorandum for Respondent).

In the Vis East 2021, the CityU team advanced to the elimination rounds, ranking fourth out of 147 teams. The team also received an Honourable Mention for the David Hunter Award (Best Memorandum for Claimant) as well as two Honourable Mentions for the Neil Kaplan Award (Best Individual Oralist) awarded to Ms. Michelle Maninggo (LLB, 6th best oralist out of 456) and Mr. Chris Wong (JD, 28th best oralist out of 456).

In the Vis Vienna 2020, the CityU team received an Honourable Mention for the Werner Melis Award (Best Memorandum for Respondent).

In the Vis Vienna 2021, the CityU team advanced to the elimination rounds, placing within the top 64 out of 387 teams. The team also received an Honourable Mention for the Werner Melis Award (Best Memorandum for Respondent) and Ms. Joyce Chong (JD) was awarded an Honourable Mention for the Martin Domke Award (Best Individual Oralist).

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International Collaboration Asian Law Schools Association (ALSA) ALSA was formally inaugurated on 15 January 2021. The inauguration was held in conjunction with the 1st ALSA Deans’ Congress on the Future of Law Schools and Legal Education. The Congress saw many deep insights from the participants (see https://www.cityu.edu.hk/slw/lib/doc/web_story/20210129_ALSA_Deans_Congress.pdf).

Virtual Signing of the ALSA Memorandum of Understanding

ALSA is an association of 22 leading Asian law schools that have come together to uphold and advance excellence in legal education and scholarship in Asia through meaningful collaboration among Asian law schools. In furtherance of the Association’s purpose, ALSA promotes the core values of academic freedom, the rule of law, diversity, integrity, and professionalism. Its membership will be increased progressively to include other law schools.

ALSA is borne out of a conviction that a rapidly developing Asia that increasingly recognises the importance of the rule and role of law can benefit from greater collaboration between legal scholars in Asia and outside Asia. The Association intends to provide the preeminent platform in Asia for research, teaching and dialogue to take place between legal scholars and with stakeholders.

To achieve its objectives, ALSA will host learned activities led by member schools. These include conferences and symposia on Commercial Law, Contract Law, Corporations Law, Law and Technology, Legal Education, and Public Law. A Young Scholars workshop will also be held in June 2021 to support young faculty.

More information on ALSA may be found at: https://www.cityu.edu.hk/slw/ALSA/.

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Collaboration Agreements One of HK’s advantages is her strong links with mainland China. This has enabled the School to become one of the most important institutions for the study of Chinese law. At the same time, the School continues to be an attractive venue for PRC students to study the common law. To deepen such opportunities, the School has signed three collaboration agreements with leading law schools in mainland China.

School of International Law, China University of Political Science and Law The students who register under the 4-year LLB Programme and the 3-year LLM Programme at China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) will have the opportunity to study at CityU. Specifically, it includes three cooperative programmes: Visiting Study+JD Programme (applicable to the LLB students of CUPL), Visiting Study+LLM Programme (applicable to the LLB students of CUPL) and 1+1+1 Programme (applicable to the LLM students of CUPL). The Programme provides opportunities for eligible LLB and LLM students of CUPL to study at CityU, so as to cultivate students with knowledge and skills in both common law and Chinese law.

School of International Law, East China University of Political Science and Law LLB students who register under the LLB Programme at East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPL) will have an opportunity to study at CityU. The students under this Programme will study for the first three years at ECUPL and the fourth year at CityU. During the period of study at CityU, ECUPL students will be enrolled as full-time visiting undergraduate students. After obtaining the LLB degree from ECUPL, eligible students can pursue the fast-track JD at CityU through credit transfers of courses taken previously.

School of Law, Shenzhen University LLM students who register under the 3-year LLM Programme and 3-year Juris Master Programme at Shenzhen University (SZU) will have an opportunity to study at CityU for a period of one year. The students under this Programme will study the first year at SZU, the second year at CityU and the final year at SZU. In CityU, SZU students will be enrolled as full-time LLM students of CityU. After successful completion, students will be awarded the LLM degree by CityU and the relevant Masters degree by SZU.

Introduction of the LLM Corporate and Financial Law stream In order to suit market needs with more specialization in corporate law and corporate finance, the LLM is being restructured and the Master of Laws in Corporate and Commercial Law ［法學碩士（公 司與商事法）］ will be renamed Master of Laws in Corporate and Financial Law［法學碩士（公司 與金融法）］. This will be implemented from Academic Year 2022/23.

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Teaching during Covid-19 I want to assure our alumni that we have spared no effort to ensure that despite the disruption caused by the pandemic, teaching quality has remained high. Many students have told me how pleasantly surprised they have been by how seamlessly the School has transitioned to the online mode of teaching. The credit for this must go to my teaching and administrative colleagues who put in a tremendous amount of work to make this possible. They have continually refined the teaching methodology and processes to the point where many students are very happy to have online classes.

Having said this, we are eagerly preparing to welcome students back to campus in August 2021. We are also having a conversation about the aspects of the online teaching experience that can enhance face-to-face learning.

Keeping in touch I hope you have found this update useful and interesting. There are quite a number of interesting and exciting developments in the pipeline and for more timely updates please visit our social media platforms at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cityuslw and WeChat: CityU_Law. Please also do not hesitate to reach out to my colleagues or should you have any suggestions or thoughts about the School.

On behalf of all of us at CityU Law, I wish you good health and hope that we will soon see a greater return to normalcy.

Sincerely,

Professor TAN Cheng-Han, SC Dean & Chair Professor of Commercial Law School of Law City University of Hong Kong

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