Having Second Thoughts about Foreign Judgments
Date: 31 March 2025 (Mon)
Time: 6:00pm – 7:00pm (HKT)
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
ABOUT THE LECTURE
There is a tendency, particularly outside England, to be critical of the common law rules for the recognition of foreign judgments. Viewers from the commercial centres of East Asia, and elsewhere, may look at the rules they have received and imagine that they see something made a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (and in which imperial suspicion of foreign adjudication motivated the law). They may have a point, but it is perhaps not the point that they believe they have. Common law conflicts rules, which were devised for a nineteenth-century world of common law, are not always an easy fit in a legal system now groaning under the weight of legislated law. The lecture will aim to explain where, and why, some second thoughts about foreign judgments are coming to the surface.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Adrian Briggs retired from the University of Oxford as Professor of Private International Law, and from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, as Tutorial Fellow, in 2021, after 41 years of service. Although he tutored generations of undergraduates in Roman, Criminal, Contract, and Land Law, his special interest was always in the conflict of laws. The referendum in 2016, which led to the incoherent mess of Brexit on 1 January 2021, made it necessary to start thinking and writing about the subject all over again. The work is ongoing.
He practises from chambers in the Temple; was appointed QC (now KC) (Hon) in 2016, and elected to the Bench of Middle Temple in 2023.
Chair :
Mr Paul Shieh SC
Head of Chambers, Temple Chambers
Hong Kong
