The Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia (TRILA) programme, based at the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore, builds on a decades-long tradition of advancing and enhancing the teaching and researching of international law in Asia. More than the strengthening and fostering of teaching and research cultures, TRILA also aims to cultivate a vibrant community of international law scholars across the Asian region. Tony Anghie, the head of TRILA will reflect on the evolution and impact of TRILA and explore the changing landscape of legal academia in Asia. The conversation will situate TRILA within the broader Global South and international efforts to rethink the teaching of international law and the role of Asian scholars in changing and reshaping international law.
Note: This event was originally scheduled for April 3.
Dr. Paul Sheard will join Professor Bruce Aronson for a discussion about Japan’s economic growth strategy and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the Takaichi Cabinet’s growth agenda, sometimes called “Sanaenomics,” and how it compares with “Abenomics.” They will also discuss how Japan’s broader strategic priorities are evolving in response to shifting domestic and global economic conditions.
Please note that the location of this event has changed to Furman Hall 212
After World War II ended in the Pacific, the United States redrew the map of East Asia. Among other things, it decided the disposition of various island groups that Japan had controlled, some of which were also claimed by China, Russia, or Korea. Decades later, these islands remain the focus of claims on all sides that periodically flare up and threaten the peace. Alexis Dudden, professor of history at the University of Connecticut, will discuss why resolution of the islands’ status remains so intractable, the role initially played by the San Francisco Treaty, now further complicated by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the ongoing threat to regional peace. USALI non-resident affiliated scholar Peter Dutton will moderate.
Please note that the location of this event has changed from WIlf 3F to VH 201
Over the summer, we added two new cases to our archive: the Liu Zhonglin Murder Case and the Xie Zhehai Murder Case. Both convictions relied heavily on contested confessions with little to no corroborating evidence; both defendants maintained their innocence and pursued relief for many years; and both spent more than two decades in prison before their convictions were overturned due to insufficient evidence. Both cases also occurred in rural areas at a time when rural police had very low investigatory capacities and DNA testing was not yet available. Check out the new additions and browse other entries in the first English-language archive of Chinese wrongful convictions.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Party) General Secretary Xi Jinping first mentioned FRROL in an internal Party meeting in 2019 in the context of discussing law’s role in economic development. Over the past five years alone, Chinese scholars have produced more than 2,000 articles on various aspects of FRROL, yet English-language treatment remains sparse and fragmented. To assess how this agenda is taking shape across legal domains, the U.S.–Asia Law Institute (USALI) at NYU School of Law and NYU Shanghai Professor Marie Adele Carrai convened the “Decoding China’s Foreign-Related Rule of Law” workshop on November 21–22, 2025. The gathering followed an initial workshop on FRROL at NYU Shanghai in April 2025.
During the postwar period Japan was well known for its active role in promoting nuclear disarmament and its anti-war constitution. However, increasing security threats from China and North Korea caused a reevaluation of Japan’s security needs and a new emphasis on deterrence. How can Japan support both nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence? Nobumasa Akiyama, professor at the School of International and Public Policy and the Graduate School of Law at Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo), director of the Center for Disarmament, Science and Technology at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, and a leading expert on Japan’s nuclear arms policy, will discuss how Japan’s policy might reconcile these conflicting interests and the likely effect of Japan’s nuclear policy on regional and global efforts aimed at both nuclear arms control and collective security.
The Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia (TRILA) programme, based at the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore, builds on a decades-long tradition of advancing and enhancing the teaching and researching of international law in Asia. More than the strengthening and fostering of teaching and research cultures, TRILA also aims to cultivate a vibrant community of international law scholars across the Asian region. Tony Anghie, the head of TRILA will reflect on the evolution and impact of TRILA and explore the changing landscape of legal academia in Asia. The conversation will situate TRILA within the broader Global South and international efforts to rethink the teaching of international law and the role of Asian scholars in changing and reshaping international law.
Note: This event was originally scheduled for April 3.
We continue our speaker series about Taiwan’s status in the world with a look at its relationship with the European Union. None of the EU’s twenty-seven member states has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but nineteen member states and the EU itself have opened quasi-embassies there and the EU holds a ministerial-level trade and investment dialogue with its government. In recent years, as tensions with China have heightened over trade disputes and the war in Ukraine, the EU Parliament has increasingly emphasized Taiwan’s shared democratic values and their similar experiences living with a powerful, authoritarian neighbor. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, a scholar who divides her time between Brussels and Taiwan, will unpack the drivers and limitations of Europe’s affinity for Taiwan.
In 2003, the U.S. Congress added a civil liability provision to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) permitting victims to seek damages from those who engaged in or benefitted from forced labor and human trafficking. Over the last 20 years, labor advocates have sought to use this statute to hold accountable companies who rely on forced labor inside the United States or occurring overseas, including in Asia. Cases have been filed against U.S. companies using workers trafficked from China or importing shrimp peeled by Cambodian migrants in Thailand, tuna caught by Indonesian fisherman, and equipment made by Chinese prisoners. Three experts will discuss recent cases brought under the TVPRA based on forced labor in Asia, and will explain the debate among federal courts over extending civil liability under the TVPRA to overseas actions.
On March 23, 2026, the NYU School of Law held a memorial service for Professor Emeritus Jerome A. Cohen in the Greenberg Lounge. The program can be found here. Click here to watch the recording.
Twelve months ago, President Donald Trump declared “liberation day” and launched a tariff war against the entire world, including key American trade partners in East Asia. Over succeeding months, additional tariffs were announced, modified, and withdrawn against countries and specific goods, such as steel and aluminum. Henry Gao, law professor at Singapore Management University and a trade expert, will take stock of the lasting impact of Trump’s weaponization of tariffs on East Asia and the global trading system. He also will ask whether the tariff war could bring a silver lining: the opportunity to finally address long-festering problems with the old trade system.
The Trump administration’s efforts to secure more control over Greenland have put China’s activities in the Arctic under a spotlight. Since 2018 when China declared itself to be a “near-Arctic state” with strategic interests in the region, it has expanded its Arctic research activities, acquired more icebreaking vessels, conducted Arctic patrols with Russia, and sent a ship from Asia to Europe through the Arctic Ocean along Russia’s northern coast – a route China has dubbed the “Polar Silk Road.” But is any of this activity contrary to international law or dangerous to the US? Professor Yuanyuan (Kate) Ren at the University of Dayton School of Law, an international law scholar who formerly worked at the Polar Research Institute of China, will explain how China interprets international law at the polar regions and what is publicly known about its Arctic goals.
Ever since elections in 2024 gave the presidency to one party and the legislature to its rivals, Taiwan’s political arena has been the scene of non-stop drama. When the Nationalist Party and its ally in the legislature tried to expand their power to oversee the executive branch, the Constitutional Court ruled them out of line and the legislature responded by shutting down the court. When the Democratic Progressive Party-led executive branch claimed power to exercise a pocket veto of legislation it didn’t like, the opposition in the legislature began a process to impeach the president even though they lack the numbers to achieve their goal. Nathan Batto, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science in Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and expert on Taiwan’s elections, will explain how Taiwan’s government structure, political culture, and other factors have contributed to the current crisis, how the Taiwanese public is responding, and the possible impact on Taiwan’s delicate international standing.
In his book, Revitalizing the World Trading System, published in 2023, Alan Wolff guided readers through the past, present and potential futures of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In this talk and subsequent conversation, he will update his prescriptions for WTO reform in light of the recent turn to unilateral tariffs, bilateral trade deals concluded under their threat, and reforms to the multilateral trading system now being proposed by both the Trump Administration and the EU. Mr. Wolff, one the leading trade experts of our time, will also consider the implications for Asia of these unprecedented challenges (and opportunities) for the world trading system.
Recorded on January 21, 2026.
The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. So says James Bacchus in his new book, Democracy for a Sustainable World: The Path from the Pnyx. Bacchus argues that global democracy and global sustainable development can only be achieved jointly. Beginning with a visit to the birthplace of democracy in ancient Athens, a hillside called the Pnyx, Bacchus explores how the Athenians practiced democratic participation millennia ago. He draws on the successes and shortfalls of Athenian democracy to offer specific proposals for meeting today’s challenges by constructing participatory democratic global governance for full human flourishing in a sustainable world. Learn more.
The contested polity of Taiwan is poor in official diplomatic relationships but rich in economic ones. Although the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan’s government, has diplomatic relations with only twelve states, it has investment agreements with thirty-three states and free trade agreements with nine. It’s also a member of the WTO and several multilateral economic rule-setting bodies. In this installment of our occasional speaker series, “Taiwan Legal,” Professor Pasha Hsieh of Singapore Management University will discuss whether trade and investment agreements convey “implied recognition,” and whether Taiwan’s strong economic ties make its legal identity more robust.
In January, the United States inaugurated restrictions on U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors. At the time, the Outbound Investment Rule was portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, Professor Harlan Cohen of Fordham Law School argues that the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, he explains, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the advancement of another.
The United States and other countries that engage in friendly but unofficial relations with Taiwan generally maintain “strategic ambiguity” on the question of whether they would help Taiwan defend itself against a possible armed attack by China. Their decision would undoubtedly be affected by many factors, including how the world would regard third-party intervention (especially military intervention) in a China-Taiwan conflict. Would the United Nations, and international law more generally, view third-party military intervention in a cross-Strait conflict as an illegal use of force? In this installment of our occasional speaker series, “Taiwan Legal,” Professor Julian Ku of Hofstra University School of Law will explain what international law says about the use of force for self-defense and collective self-defense.