International Law Section
The ILS - China Focus Group is chaired by Ms Vivienne Bath, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at Sydney University. The primary purpose of the Focus Group is to hold seminars and provide information to help legal practitioners wanting information about Chinese law.
The International Law Section's China Focus Group played a key role in organising and presenting papers at the China Law Society's highly successful International Conference for Effective Legal and Judgment Writing.
The trilingual Conference (Chinese, English and French) was a joint project of the China Law Society Legal Writing Society, the China Focus Group, the China research groups of two of Australia's leading universities (the Centre for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Sydney (CAPLUS) and the China Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and two French legal research groups - the Foundation for Continental Law (Civil Law Initiative) and the Association Franco-Chinoise pour le Droit Economique (AFCDE).
The Australian delegation was led by Focus Group Convenor Vivienne Bath who presented a paper on effective legal writing in contractual documents, with commentary by Professor Vai Io Lo of Bond University. Professor Cao of Griffiths University presented a paper, "Linguistic Uncertainty and Statutory Interpretation" with commentary by Professor Natalie Stoianoff (Faculty of Law, UTS), another member of the Focus Group. Judge Judith Gibson gave a paper ("Judicial Style and Reasoning") and Justice Peter Rose, another delegation member, chaired the afternoon moot trial session, sharing the podium with a genuine Chinese Supreme Court judge, Judge He Bo of the Beijing High People's Court, and Professor Stephanie Balme, Professor of Law at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China's leading university.
Other speakers at the Conference included Professor Marie Gore, Professor of Law at the University of Paris II, Jacques Sagot (President of the AFCDE) and professors of law from the leading universities all over China.
The Conference was opened with speeches from the Deputy President of the Shanghai High Court and the President of the China Legal and Writing Society, Professor Ma Hong Jun. Following this Conference, Judge Gibson, Professor Deborah Cao and Professor Vai Io Lo travelled to Beijing for the 24th IVR Conference which was attended by almost 1,000 academics from countries all over the world.
