An obscure reef in the South China Sea has become the latest flashpoint in China’s long-running campaign to dominate the South China Sea. Since last summer, the Chinese Coast Guard has repeatedly employed water cannons, lasers, and acoustic weapons and rammed Philippine Navy and Coast Guard vessels to prevent them from resupplying military personnel positioned at Second Thomas Shoal. Jay Batongbacal, a lawyer and professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, will discuss how this tiny maritime feature became a potential conflict site, why a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in the Philippines’ favor has not ended the dispute, and how international law can continue to be effective in the face of Chinese attacks.

As interest in AI surges around the world, and concerns about the risks and harms of AI technology are wide-ranging. Regulatory discussions are correspondingly complex, touching on values such as human rights, democracy, and sustainability. Professor Hiroki Habuka of the Kyoto University Graduate School of Law and Professor Daniel Francis of NYU School of Law will use the current Japanese approach to AI regulation as a framework to explore some of the big questions that AI presents to legislators, citizens, and regulatory theorists.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one of the most widely embraced international conventions, ratified by 189 states including states in East Asia. But what impact has it had on the actual lives of women in East Asia?

Over a decade has passed since the United Nations adopted the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Human Rights Now, a Tokyo-based international human rights NGO, works to promote awareness and implementation of the principles in Asia.

Labor unions have recently reappeared in news headlines in Japan and the US as both countries recognize a need to improve employee wages, benefits, and working conditions.  However, there is a striking fundamental difference between the two countries.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine one year ago, Japan has begun significantly upgrading its national security posture. It announced plans to double defense-related expenditures to equal 2 percent of GDP in five years and updated three of its key national security documents.

In many advanced countries, traditional forms of capitalism have increasingly come under criticism as contributing to economic and social inequality and failing to serve the needs of society. Law Professors Gen Goto and Curtis J. Milhaupt will discuss the similarities and differences between new forms of capitalism being circulated in Japan and the US, and the implications for corporate governance and, more broadly, society.

Yuki Tatsumi, director of the Japan Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., and a leading expert on Japan’s security policy, will discuss how recent events are affecting the process of revising Japan’s National Security Strategy and the likely direction of its new security policy.

Discussions of US-Japanese cooperation often focus on geopolitics and trade. This panel will examine the ways in which the two governments, working separately and together, have shaped the global architecture for addressing climate change.

At the World Trade Organization (WTO), over 110 countries and regions are currently negotiating over investment facilitation for development. The aim is to facilitate foreign direct investment by improving the transparency and efficiency of investment measures and encouraging sustainable investment.

China’s bid to join the CPTPP megatrade agreement presents a challenge for Japan in its new leadership role as the regional flag bearer for free trade.

In his forthcoming book Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, Dr. Michael Green argues that no other country has devised a grand strategy for managing China’s rising economic and military power as deliberately or successfully as Japan. Green

How do lawyers maintain the Olympic dream of international cooperation governed by mutually accepted rules? The recently concluded 2020 Tokyo Olympics provides an opportunity to explore select issues facing lawyers…

Please join us for a discussion of recent developments in "Innocence" work in Asia and the United States. Experts from China, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. will discuss significant trends in exonerating the innocent with special panels focusing on the exclusion of junk science from evidence and the positive and negative roles played by prosecutors, that is, sometimes supporting exonerations and contributing to wrongful convictions.