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DESCRIPTION:Professor of Business Law Peer Zumbansen welcomes Law Professor
  Shahla Ali as part of the 2021-2022 Seminars in Business & Society series
 . Professor Shahla Ali is Associate Dean (International) at the University
  of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and Director of the LLM Program in Arbitratio
 n and Dispute Resolution. Her work centers on questions of governance\, de
 velopment and cross-border dispute resolution in the Asia Pacific region. 
 She serves as a bilingual arbitrator (English/Chinese) with CIETAC\, HKIAC
 \, KCAB and SIAC.\n\nAbstract\n\nInternational commercial arbitration has 
 long been subject of critique for unequal access to and participation in s
 haping the norms of this transnational legal order.\n\nWhat can be learned
  from a success story in broadening Asian state participation?\n\nHow migh
 t regional centres\, such as the UN Commission on International Trade Law'
 s Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific help level the playing field fo
 r legal practitioners in diverse regions in terms of access to and contrib
 ution to the generation of norms governing cross border dispute resolution
 ?\n\nCore themes\n\nThe movement toward greater inclusivity in global soft
  law making is set out against a backdrop of historically uneven represent
 ation in global institutions. Calls to expand stakeholder participation ha
 s aimed at strengthening legitimacy through more inclusive representation 
 and regional adaptation. An innovative effort to advance participation in 
 soft law development began in 2012 with the establishment of the United Na
 tions Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) Regional Centre f
 or Asia and the Pacific. As the first Centre of its kind\, it was charged 
 with coordinating with private and public institutions in the Asia Pacific
  in the development\, interpretation and application of global cross-borde
 r commercial and dispute settlement guidelines. The experience of this Cen
 tre offers a window into what this seminar describes as a new form of “Dec
 entralized Transnational Legal Ordering.”\n\nThe study discussed here and 
 published by Edward Elgar in 2021\, Forming Transnational Dispute Settleme
 nt Norms: Soft Law and the Role of the UNCITRAL Regional Centre for Asia a
 nd the Pacific\, tests the proposition that the presence of regional centr
 es has the potential to expand participation in global soft law making. It
  carries out a novel analysis of the influence of decentralized engagement
  in overcoming representational deficits in the design of global soft law 
 pertaining to cross-border dispute settlement. It does this by comparing t
 he impact of two forms of engagement in the Asia-Pacific region\, traditio
 nal ‘centralised’ engagement and the more recent ‘decentralised’ form\, on
  the soft law-making process over a 10 year period. The former is characte
 rised by formal intermittent participation in global deliberation processe
 s at UN headquarters through Working Group II (dispute resolution) meeting
 s prior to 2012\, and the latter characterized by informal\, localised and
  decentralised engagement facilitated through the regional centre after Ja
 nuary 2012 when the UNCITRAL RCAP was established.\n\nThe studies key find
 ings\, drawing on in-depth case studies\, a survey of 50 legal practitione
 rs involved in regional legal reform\, and empirical analysis of UNCITRAL 
 working group participation logs suggest that regional centers such as the
  UNCITRAL Regional Centre for the Asia-Pacific while still in their early 
 development\, have corresponded with the emergence of a new form of “decen
 tralized transnational legal ordering” associated with growing regional en
 gagement and participation in global soft law design. This is evidenced by
  a 63% increase in the frequency of Asia-Pacific regional input in WG II m
 eetings\, an 8% increase in official Asia-Pacific representation in the WG
  II\, a 6.2% increase in the number of observers from the Asia-Pacific reg
 ion\, and an average increase of 32% in perceived levels of engagement and
  participation amongst regional stakeholders over a 10-year period. Region
 al legal developments and innovations have likewise informed ongoing globa
 l innovation in soft law making\, while inaugural localized and increasing
 ly accessible intersession meetings have engaged a growing number of pract
 itioners in conversations about soft law design. The substantive findings 
 of this study\, alongside unique methodological contributions in the desig
 n of a new set of indicators tracking regional participation\, provide use
 ful insights supporting the expansion of regional centres in areas with hi
 storically limited representation in global law making including from with
 in Africa\, the Middle East and South America.\n	 \n\n \n
DTSTART:20211109T010000Z
DTEND:20211109T023000Z
LOCATION:Zoom: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/85095278959
SUMMARY:Advancing Global Stakeholder Representation Through Decentralized T
 ransnational Dispute Resolution: A View from the Asia Pacific
URL:/law/channels/event/advancing-global-stakeholder-r
 epresentation-through-decentralized-transnational-dispute-resolution-33426
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