Members of the Postgraduate Legal Studies Department Invited to Deliver Papers at Prestigious International Conferences around the Globe

Academic staff teaching at Swansea LLM degrees are at the forefront of scholarship in their particular areas of expertise, which they combine with skilled and innovative teaching.

They are also members of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law (IISTL), an internationally renowned research centre, which promotes research and teaching of the highest standard in the fields of international shipping and trade law.  The IISTL has a global reputation and its members are often invited to speak at international conferences to disseminate the results of their research. Like any other year, members of the Postgraduate Legal Studies Department with the commencement of the academic year of 2014-15 have travelled around the world delivering academic papers in prominent international events on shipping, transport and trade law.

‌On 17 September 2014, Dr Theodora Nikaki delivered a keynote address at the InterTran Research Project Closing Conference in Helsinki entitled “European Intermodal Sustainable Transport - Quo Vadis?”. The InterTran project is an interdisciplinary research project focusing on the expanding new, European transport policy from a legal and logistical point of view. It is a research project financed by the Finnish Academy and The Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law jointly. Dr Nikaki’s paper, titled “The Future of Multimodal Transport: Is the Uniform Liability System the Way Forward?”, tested the feasibility of the uniform liability system as basis of a new multimodal regime. The paper also examined the difficulties in implementing a new multimodal transport regime arising out of the existing international transport conventions, a theme which also provoked a lively debate among the participants.

On 11 September, Professor Andrew Tettenborn addressed the Eighth European Colloquium on Maritime Law Research, hosted by the Rotterdam Institute for Shipping & Transport Law (RISTL). The European Maritime Colloquia are a series of biannual conferences organized by leading maritime law centers in Europe, in collaboration with the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law (University of Oslo, Norway). The Eighth Colloquium’s theme was “Common core, PECL and DCFR: Could they change shipping law?” and Professor Tettenborn delivered a paper on “"How far the imposition of a serious good faith obligation (an important part of both PECL and DCFR) might impact on the black-and-white world of shipping contracts." His thought-provocative paper has sparked a debate over the concept of good faith in various jurisdictions and its impact on shipping law. 

Nikaki-Baughen

Professor Baughen (on the left) and Dr Nikaki (on the right) during Panel discussions at an International Conference

On 16 October, Professor Simon Baughen gave a paper at a conference at the University of Marmara on “Marine Pollution Liabilities in EU waters. New Developments” which considered the impact on oil rig operators of art. 38 of the 2013 Offshore Oil and Gas Operations Directive, art 38, extends the geographical limits of water pollution to the EEZ of Member States. The paper also considered the extent to which the CLC system of civil liability for oil pollution from ships has been undermined by civil claims attached to criminal proceedings arising out of the ‘Erika’ spill, in France, and the ‘Prestige’ spill, in Spain.

Most recently (7-8 November), Professor Bariş Soyer, the Director of the IISTL, attended the International Conference on "Hong Kong Maritime Law Forum" organised by the Hong Kong Centre for Maritime and Transportation Law (City University of Hong Kong) and delivered a paper discussing why the Athens Convention 2002 will be a good model for Asian countries to follow to regulate compensation claims for passengers carried by sea. Professor Soyer has written on this subject extensively and is currently working on a piece with Dr Leloudas, another IISTL member, evaluating how air law conventions can be utilised to fill the gaps that arise in the context of the Athens Convention.     

On 8 November Professor Simon Baughen co-organised a conference at the University of Bristol on “Corporate Accountability and Access to remedies for Corporate Wrongs”, the third in a series of conferences organised by the University of Sheffield with an ESRC grant. The series will conclude in 2017 with a submission to the UN Human Rights Council based on findings from the conference series. Professor Baughen gave a paper “Life after Kiobel. The future for human rights litigations against MNCs in the US.” on the future of human rights litigation in the US District Courts under the Alien Tort Statute following the Supreme Court’s decision on the territorial reach of the statute in April 2013 in Kiobel.