SPEAKERS

Professor Yeo is a graduate of the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he taught for 17 years, and the University of Oxford where he was a Senior Research Fellow. He joined the Singapore Management University of Singapore when it started its School of Law in 2007. He has served as Associate Dean and Dean, and is currently the Yong Pung How Chair Professor. He has broad research interests in private law, with a particular focus on private international law. He has published in Singapore, the UK, Australia, Japan and China, and his works have been widely cited in courts as well as other academic works. He is the author of the Conflict of Laws volume of Halsbury’s Laws of Singapore, and has appeared before the Singapore Court of Appeal as amicus curiae in several complex cross-border commercial cases. He was a member of the Singapore delegation to the Hague Conference on Private International Law in the international negotiations leading to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters of 2019, and had chaired working committees during the negotiations.

Justice Anselmo Reyes was a Judge of the Court of First Instance in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. As a Judge, his specialisation was construction, arbitration, commercial and admiralty matters. Justice Reyes obtained a BA (Law), LLM and PhD in Law from Cambridge University in 1982, 1983 and 1987 respectively, and was called to both the Hong Kong and the Singapore Bar. He was appointed Senior Counsel in Hong Kong in 2001. He was Professor of Legal Practice in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong from 2012 to 2018 and is an active practitioner in commercial arbitration. He was Representative of the Hague Conference on Private International Law Asia Pacific Regional Office in Hong Kong from 2013 to 2017. He is also an Overseas Bencher of the Inner Temple.

From 1981 to 2001, Chief Justice Allsop practised at the Bar in New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia. He was appointed Senior Counsel in New South Wales in 1994 and Queen’s Counsel in Western Australia in 1998.

From 7 May 2001 to 1 June 2008 he served as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, undertaking the roles of trial and appellate judge on a full range of Federal Court work. From 2 June 2008 to 28 February 2013, Chief Justice Allsop was President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia as of 1 March 2013.

From 1981 to 2014 Chief Justice Allsop taught part-time at the University of Sydney as a tutor and lecturer in property, equity, bankruptcy, insolvency, corporate finance and maritime law. From 2015 to 2018 he taught maritime law part-time at the University of Queensland. From 2005-2009, he was a member of the board of World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden. From 2008 to 2011 he was a member of the Board of the Australian Maritime College. On January 2010, he was elected as an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple. On 19 March 2013 he was elected a member of the American Law Institute. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. He is President of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History. From 2018 he was appointed Inaugural Patron of the Australian Insurance Law Association. From 2019 Chair of ACICA Judicial Liaison Committee. From 2019 he accepted membership on Asian Business Law Institute (ABLI) Board of Governors representing the Australian Judiciary.

P. Kevin Castel entered service as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York on November 4, 2003 and today serves as a Senior Judge of that Court.

Prior to the bench, Judge Castel practiced in the field of commercial litigation, including securities, antitrust, employment and products liability law. He was a partner in a major national law firm for twenty years, and served as the firm’s co-administrative partner. Prior to entering private practice, he served as law clerk to a judge on the Court he now serves.

Judge Castel presently serves as Chair of the New York State-Federal Judicial Council which facilitates coordination and cooperation between the federal and state judicial systems. He has taught as an adjunct professor in the field of Professional Responsibility at NYU School of Law and has served as Chair of the Court’s Grievance Committee, its lawyer-disciplinary body. While in private practice, he served for twelve years as a Court-appointed member of the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the First Judicial Department.

Judge Castel is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He is former President of the Federal Bar Council and also is a former Chair of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association.

He received his B.S. and J.D. degrees from St. John’s University. In law school, he was articles editor of the law review and a St. Thomas More Scholar.

Following a judicial career of 18 years, Sir Peter Gross now practises as an Arbitrator at Twenty Essex.

As a barrister at Twenty Essex before appointment to the Bench, Sir Peter specialised in commercial (shipping, oil, insurance and reinsurance, admiralty) and arbitration disputes, also sitting as an arbitrator.

As a High Court Judge, appointed in 2001, Sir Peter was designated a Judge of the Commercial Court in 2002 and was Judge in charge of the Commercial Court in 2009-2010. Sir Peter was a Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit from 2005 – 2008. Appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2010, Sir Peter served as Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales (2013 – 2015). During his judicial career, Sir Peter presided over many commercial and arbitration related disputes.

More recently, Sir Peter was Lead Judge for International Relations (2018 – 2019) and has undertaken many Judicial visits (over the period 2003 – 2019), including Jamaica, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Argentina, USA, Jordan, Brunei, Singapore and Uzbekistan.

Sir Peter was the Co-Chairman of the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts (SIFoCC) International Case Management Working Group, whose ‘Working Presumptions – International Best Practice’ were endorsed by the Global Network’s membership and published on 27 May 2020.

In November 2019, Sir Peter was appointed President of the Slynn Foundation, dedicated to advancing the Rule of Law internationally.

In December 2020, Sir Peter was appointed by the Lord Chancellor to chair the Independent Human Rights Act Review (“IHRAR”), examining whether the Human Rights Act 1998 is working effectively.

Sir Peter has been included in the list (published in December 2020) of those to be appointed to arbitration panels established under the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement to address disputes between the EU and UK under that Agreement.

In January 2021, Sir Peter was appointed to the Court of Appeal of the Dubai International Financial Centre (“DIFC”).

Adeline Chong joined SMU in November 2007. She was formerly a lecturer at the School of Law, University of Nottingham. She obtained First Class Honours from the University of Birmingham and subsequently was awarded a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D in Nottingham. She has published in the leading peer-reviewed journals such as Law Quarterly Review, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly and the Journal of Private International Law. She is the co-author of Hill and Chong, International Commercial Disputes: Commercial Conflict of Laws in English Courts (Oxford, Hart, 4th edn, 2010). Her work has been cited by the Singapore, Hong Kong, New South Wales and New Zealand Court of Appeals, the Singapore and New Zealand High Courts, the UK Law Commission, as well as in leading texts on conflict of laws such as Dicey, Morris and Collins on the Conflict of Laws (15th edition, 2012). She has appeared as an expert on Singapore law before a Finnish court and issued a declaration on Singapore law for a US class action. She is the Project Lead for the Asian Business Law Institute project on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgment Rules in Asia.

Justice Judith Prakash was appointed Judge of Appeal on 1 August 2016, having been on the High Court bench since 1992, first as a Judicial Commissioner and then as Judge. She was also the first woman to be appointed a permanent judge of the Singapore Court of Appeal. On 7 March 2017, she was appointed Judge of the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts where she heard appeal cases on a part-time basis for three years.

Justice Prakash graduated from the University of Singapore in 1974 with an LLB (Hons) degree. She was admitted as an advocate and solicitor in Singapore the following year and spent the next 18 years in private practice specialising, first in shipping law and then in banking and commercial law. As a Judge, she dealt primarily with commercial cases with a concentration on arbitration law.

Justice Prakash is also the Chair of the Publication Committee and the Law Reform Committee of the Singapore Academy of Law.