Intertwining Human Rights and Energy Justice to Obtain a Social License to Operate in the Era of Energy Transition

Climate Change Law, Human Rights

My latest co-authored research has been published as a chapter in in The Palgrave Handbook of Social License to Operate and Energy Transitions, examines the concept of a Social License to Operate (SLO) as a dynamic interaction between industry stakeholders and local communities in the context of energy transitions and climate change. It explores how the principles of energy justice—distributive, procedural, recognition, and restorative—can facilitate the attainment and sustainability of a SLO. These principles address fairness in decision-making, benefit distribution, community engagement, and rectification of past injustices, fostering trust and aligning energy initiatives with community needs.

Corruption and Illegality in Asian Investment Arbitration

Comparative Law, Criminal Law, International Law

Our open-access co-edited book was published last year by Springer in their interdisciplinary Asia in Transition series, launched by the Attorney-Gerneral of Brunei and later the former Chief Justice of Western Australia. Despite many new legal instruments created to combat corruption, it remains serious across most parts of Asia, as outlined in the editors’ introduction and detailed across nine jurisdiction-specific chapters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, emergency measures for government procurement and economic management expanded opportunities for corruption and impacted enforcement activities. Overall corruption has persisted despite new national and international law instruments, and issues related to bribery and other serious illegal behaviour by foreign investors continue to emerge across Asia.

Ship’s Delivery Orders

Commercial Law, Maritime Law

In one of the few contributions on ship’s delivery orders in an established maritime law journal (‘Ship’s Delivery Orders’ [1976] LMCLQ 29), Nigel Teare traced the delivery order to 1888 in the Scottish case of Cunningham v Guthrie ([1888] 26 Sc .L.R. 208). The use of a delivery order must indeed have been new at that time as Lord Trayner referred to the ‘somewhat novel mode of procuring cargo on delivery-order’.

Utilising the Port State Measures Agreement to Combat Human Trafficking at Sea

International Law, Public International Law

Human trafficking poses a significant threat worldwide, including in the Southeast Asia region. According to the 2022 report by the UNODC, although trafficking flows involving Asian and African victims have a global reach, most human trafficking remains regional. The majority of cross-border trafficking victims are found in neighbouring or nearby countries within their region of origin. Regional patterns show that victims typically move from lower-income to higher-income countries, and when destination countries are low-income, victims are usually trafficked from neighbouring nations with an even lower GDP. Trafficking always entails the exploitation of victims. This goes beyond merely ‘selling’ individuals; it involves forcing victims into sexual exploitation, forced labour, or other abusive practices. This practice extends beyond land-based exploitation to activities at sea, with growing evidence showing that both labour and sexual exploitation occur aboard fishing vessels, making the abuse largely invisible to the public and harder for authorities to monitor or control.

New Property in International Law

Public International Law

Property in international law is an enigma. We are told that international law possesses sufficient content to regulate property, we are shown provisions in international instruments addressing property rights, and we bear witness to the resolution of property disputes in accordance with international law. Yet, when we are asked what the defining attributes of property in international law are, we draw a collective blank. The absence of reformist agitation from the international community towards an international law that brazenly regulates what it cannot (or will not) even define represents the turning of a collective blind eye to a critical knowledge gap. In the same way that driving a car with closed eyes is a possibly fatal accident in the making, driving the content of international law on property regulation without discerning the object of regulation is a possibly fatal anomaly in the laborious, and supposedly progressive, enterprise of legal development.

Force Majeure Clauses: Character, Scope and Protection

Contract Law

A consignor of goods enters into a multi-voyage carriage contract for carrying iron ore. It depends upon a parent company to supply it with cargoes. The parent has not contracted for cargoes for some voyages. A catastrophic flood now inundates the mine from which the cargoes would have been sourced. Does a force majeure clause in the carriage contract exclude the consignor’s liability because of the flood, even though the consignor was in no position to perform anyway? And if it does not, how extensive should the consignor’s liability in damages be if the flood would have prevented performance in any event?

Digital First in Maritime Law

Maritime Law

Through this blogpost I briefly introduce the article: ‘Technology-mediated organisation of transport actors: laytime in perspective’ (2023) 29(6) Journal of International Maritime Law 346-365, that frames democratic ecosystem governance by using a charity and a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). The article argues that in this age of new information systems, public benefit and collective decision-making are essential for providing a conscience to the existing legal framework of trade and transport.