Foreign Judgments and Their Impact on Arbitral Awards
Date: 7 April 2025 (Mon)
Time: 5:45 pm – 7:15 pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
The seminar will examine the issues that arise when our courts are presented with an arbitral award from a tribunal in State A, upon which the courts of State A or State B have handed down judgments to confirm or deny the validity and enforceability of the award. We will aim to do so from the perspectives of (1) an arbitrator and a judge; (2) a practitioner; and (3) a academic exponent of the conflict of laws. The aim will be to expose the nature of the problem, the better to understand what the answers ought to be.
About the speakers:
Adrian Briggs
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.
Justice Anselmo Reyes
Anselmo Reyes practises as an arbitrator. He was Professor of Legal Practice at Hong Kong University from October 2012 to September 2018. Before that, he was a judge of the Hong Kong High Court from September 2003 to September 2012, when he oversaw the Construction and Arbitration List (2004-8) and the Commercial and Admiralty Lists (2008-12). He was Representative of the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s Regional Office for the Asia Pacific from April 2013 to July 2017. He became an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court in January 2015. He is an Overseas Bencher of the Inner Temple.
Paul Shieh
Paul Shieh SC read law as an undergraduate at Queens’ College, Cambridge (Bachelor of Arts 1987), followed by the PCLL at the University of Hong Kong in 1988. He then obtained the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law at Worcester College, Oxford in 1989 with the Dr Morris Prize in The Conflict of Laws. He commenced practice as a barrister in Hong Kong in 1990, and was appointed as Senior Counsel in 2003. His practice area includes commercial disputes resolution in cases with a conflict of laws and arbitration element. Apart from his legal practice he has also taken up a number of public offices and appointments such as the Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association and Recorder of the Court of First Instance of the High Court.
He is now Head of Chambers of Temple Chambers, Hong Kong.
Chaired by Professor Kelvin Low, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
