Views
Can a Seat Court Injunct a Foreign Non-Party to an Arbitration? Singapore High Court clarifies in Alphard Maritime v Samson Maritime (2025) SGHC 154
This guest post is posted on behalf of Kamakshi Puri, Senior Associate at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Delhi, India, and dual-qualified lawyer (India and England and Wales).
The Singapore High Court recently clarified the scope of the court’s jurisdiction over foreign non-parties to the arbitration. In an application to set aside two interim injunctions, in Alphard Maritime Ltd. v Samson Maritime Ltd. & Ors. (2025) SGHC 154,[1] the court held that the the seat per se did not confer jurisdiction against non-parties to an arbitration, and that jurisdiction would first have to be established through regular service-out procedures before the seat court could grant an injunction against a non-party.
AI in Arbitration: Will the EU AI Act Stand in the Way of Enforcement?
This guest post was written by Ezzatollah Pabakhsh, Master’s Student at the University of Antwerp
The European Union has taken an unprecedented step by regulating artificial intelligence (AI) through the EU AI Act, which is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for AI governance. According to Recital 61, Article 6(2) and Annex III, 8(a), AI tools used in legal or administrative decision-making processes—including alternative dispute resolution (ADR), when used similarly to courts and producing legal effects—are considered high risk. These tools must comply with the strict requirements outlined in Articles 8 through 27. Read more
Clearly Inappropriate Down Under: Isaacman v King [No 2] and the Outer Limits of Long-Arm Jurisdiction
By Dr Sarah McKibbin, University of Southern Queensland
The Supreme Court of New South Wales’ decision in Isaacman v King [No 2][1] is the kind of case that tempts one to say ‘nothing to see here’, and yet it richly rewards a closer look. On a conventional application of Voth v Manildra Flour Mills[2] — the leading Australian authority on forum non conveniens — Garling J stayed proceedings that attempted to litigate a New York relationship dispute in Sydney, being ‘well satisfied’ that the NSW Supreme Court was a clearly inappropriate forum.[3] The reasons, though brief by design,[4] illuminate the transaction costs of jurisdictional overreach,[5] show how the Voth framework handles an extreme set of facts, and offer a careful case study for empirical debates about Australian ‘parochialism’ in jurisdictional decision-making. Read more
News
The Procedural Law Unit at the University of Nicosia’s 5th Annual Symposium and JIWP 2025 Conference: “Judicial Independence and Liberal Democracy Under Threat: The Challenge of Implementing the ELI Mt Scopus Standards on Judicial Independence”
A symposium on “Judicial Independence and Liberal Democracy Under Threat: The Challenge of Implementing the ELI Mt Scopus Standards on Judicial Independence” will take place from 10 to 12 December 2025 at the University of Nicosia. The event is organised by the Procedural Law Unit in cooperation with the International Association of Judicial Independence and World Peace (JIWP) and will be held at the UNESCO Amphitheatre.
Registration Open – Book Launch: The Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements: A Commentary
Registration is open for the book launch celebrating the publication of The Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements: A Commentary, to be held in hybrid format in The Hague on 11 December 2025 from 1.30 p.m. to 4.45 p.m. (CET). The book launch will coincide with the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the 2005 Choice of Court Convention.
The book launch will consist of two session. In the first session, the authors and discussants will explore selected chapters of the book. Brooke Marshall (University of Oxford) and Stephanie Francq (Catholic University of Louvain) will discuss the manifest injustice and public policy exception in Article 6 of the Convention; Louise Ellen Teitz (Roger Williams University) and Fausto Pocar (University of Milan) will discuss declarations under Articles 21 and 22 and accommodating multiple legal systems; and Gilles Cuniberti (University of Luxembourg, EAPIL) and Adrian Briggs KC (University of Oxford) will discuss the law applicable to the issue of consent to choice of court agreements. The second session of the event will discuss the practical operation of the Convention and the practical application of the text, with the participation of Delphia Lim (Ministry of Law of Singapore), Colin Seouw (Colin Seouw Chambers LLC), and Anselmo Reyes (Singapore International Commercial Court). Dr Christophe Bernasconi (HCCH) will provide opening remarks, and Melissa Ford and Dr Ning Zhao (HCCH) will moderate the discussions.
For more information, and to register, please visit: https://www.hcch.net/en/instruments/conventions/specialised-sections/choice-of-court/hcch-book-launch
This post is published by the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference of Private International Law (HCCH).
Fourth Issue of the Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly for 2025
The fourth issue of the Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly for 2025 has recently been published. It contains the following articles, cases notes and book review.
Michael Howard, “The True History of the Origin of the Mareva Injunction or Freezing Order”
Fifty years ago, in 1975, a revolutionary innovation occurred in English procedural law, the introduction of what is officially named the freezing injunction, formerly and to some extent even now known as the Mareva injunction. It was the consequence of two decisions of the Commercial Court, the Karageorgis and Mareva cases. The thesis of this article, lightly camouflaged, is that these cases and this change were brought about by a combination of four factors which are present in most such developments of the common law: the personal, the institutional, the technical legal and the accidental. It is an attempt to present all of them and to show that the first and particularly the last were disproportionately large contributors.
Masood Ahmed, “State Immunity and the New York Convention”
Adrian Briggs, “Book Review of Hong Kong Private International Law” (by Wilson Lui and Anselmo Reyes)
My views
I read the interesting—but in my view unconvincing—critical review by Emeritus Professor Adrian Briggs of “Private International Law in Hong Kong” (by Wilson Lui and Anselmo Reyes). My reading of the review is that Briggs laments the authors’ limited engagement with English sources, suggesting that because Hong Kong’s private international law is not as fully developed as Singapore’s, English texts and cases should operate as gap-fillers.
I take a different view. I am pleased to see Asian private international law scholars asserting a more autonomous and context-sensitive approach to developing their conflict-of-laws rules. That intellectual independence is healthy for the discipline, and it is precisely the direction I believe African private international law should pursue.