Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon: Opening Remarks at ASEAN Law Association (ALA) and Council of ASEAN Chief Justices (CACJ) GALA Dinner

Your Excellency, Tun Tengku Maimun binti Tuan Mat, President of the ASEAN Law Association 
Chief Justices

Chairs and Heads of Delegation of the ALA National Committees and the CACJ

Ms Bharti Seth, ALA Secretary-General

Mr Nararya S. Soeprapto, Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN for Community and Corporate Affairs

ALA members

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen

1. Good evening, and welcome to this year’s Gala Dinner. Let me begin by thanking The Honourable Minister Desmond Lee for very graciously agreeing to join us for tonight’s dinner. Let me just make the point that he was booked tonight and he changed his booking to come and spend at least an hour with us. And I want to say, at a personal level, I’m deeply grateful for the trouble you’ve taken. Minister Lee has deep roots in the legal profession, having served in various capacities, beginning as a Justices’ Law Clerk in the Supreme Court, a prosecutor, a deputy director of legal policy at the Ministry of Law and as in-house counsel at a global investment company. He is no stranger to the legal community, and we are absolutely delighted that he is here with us to celebrate what has been a productive couple of days.

2. The progress that we have achieved and accomplished today should fill all of us with pride and optimism for the future of ALA. This is a subject I want to touch on this evening, by reflecting on how we might build on this momentum to chart an even more ambitious path ahead.

3. It is sometimes easy to lose sight of how special ALA is as an institution. It is perhaps the only organisation in and for ASEAN that brings together such a diverse community of legal professionals, from judges and government lawyers to practitioners and in-house counsel, and even now to students and of course the academia.¹ This inclusive membership uniquely positions ALA to drive meaningful change by mobilising the considerable intellectual legal capital that our collective membership possesses.²

4. But ALA must strive in order to remain relevant. When ALA was first formed, it was one of the very few institutions that promoted dialogue among legal professionals of the ASEAN member states. But as alternative platforms for engagement emerge and proliferate, its defining advantage risks being eroded. This comes at a time when the challenges confronting our communities demand closer coordination and integration in our legal systems, not divergence and fragmentation. This has been a recurring theme of the seminars on transnational commerce and practice that have taken place over the last two days. In addition, all our legal systems face serious issues such as climate change, geopolitical tensions, and the rapid advancement of modern technology, including the emergence of crypto assets and of course, the issues associated with generative AI. 

5. ALA stands at a crossroads today. With its unique ability to harness the energy of legal professionals from throughout the region, it can make a difference to how we address these issues in a collaborative and thoughtful way. The choices that we in ALA make about the future work of our organisation will have profound implications for our institution’s continuing relevance.

6. The path forward requires bold action and strategic thinking and this morning at the 46th Governing Council meeting, we resolved to establish a working group chaired by Justice Lee Seiu Kin to undertake a review and a renewal of our vision for ALA. While we await the outcome of the work of that group, this evening, I want to explore one critical pathway that ALA could pursue, namely, a strengthened relationship with the Council of ASEAN Chief Justices (“CACJ”).

7. The CACJ traces its origins to an observation that the majority of the ALA National Committees had been headed by the Chief Justices of our region. Over the past decade or so, nearly every CACJ Meeting has been held in conjunction with the ALA Governing Council Meetings or the General Assembly Meetings, well before we formalised this arrangement last year at the 45th ALA Governing Council Meeting and the 11th CACJ Meeting.³ 

8. Beyond this historical connection, ALA and the CACJ share deep natural affinities, and this is most clearly seen in their respective mission statements. The mission of ALA, as enshrined in its Constitution, is to promote peace and prosperity in ASEAN through legal cooperation and advancing the rule of law. This is achieved by fostering close relations and mutual understanding among legal professionals in the region, by facilitating collaboration on legal research, and by working towards the harmonisation of our laws.⁴ The CACJ Mission Statement reflects similar aims, which include supporting the purposes and principles of ASEAN, upholding the rule of law, and strengthening principled partnerships in the spirit of institutional independence.⁵

9. There plainly is a striking complementarity between the aims and purposes of both organisations and they may be seen to be rooted in the aim of using the law as a key instrument to drive investment and development in ASEAN for the betterment of the lives of our people. In holding the ALA and CACJ meetings together, we should therefore not only value the administrative convenience and wider participation this arrangement enables but also harness the strengths of both institutions by proactively pursuing collaborative initiatives. 

10. This year, we organised a series of joint events with this very objective in mind:

(a) We kickstarted this series yesterday with a forward-looking seminar on the Future of Cross-Border Insolvency and Dispute Resolution in ASEAN. These are precisely the kinds of issues that cannot be addressed by judges or lawyers acting in silos and that demand a range of perspectives from across the dispute resolution community. That is why we brought together a dozen judges, practitioners and policymakers to articulate what they see as the challenges facing our region and to propose solutions to meet its varied and evolving needs.

(b) This afternoon we had a seminar on the Transnational Practice of Law in ASEAN. We assembled a diverse panel of practitioners from across the region and enriched this with academic and policy perspectives through a keynote address that was given by Professor Simon Tay. Professor Tay is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, a senior consultant with a large Singapore law firm, and Chairman of the think tank, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, and he brought his diverse experiences to bear in a thoughtful address and then moderated an excellent discussion with four cross-border practitioners – two covering dispute resolution and two covering transactional work.

(c) These seminars were accompanied by the Meetings of ASEAN Insolvency Judges and Practitioners and of ASEAN IP Judges and Practitioners, which included a session on the “Economics and Ergonomics of Cross-Border Insolvency” and a timely panel discussion on “The Impact of Generative AI on Intellectual Property”, and these featured judges, regulators and practitioners. I am greatly encouraged to learn that the discussions at both meetings were robust and engaging, and they underscore how the convergence of judicial insight and professional experience can bring a distinctive richness and depth to our deliberations.

11. We hope that the joint initiatives this year serve as a proof of concept that coordinated programming can deliver significant value to both organisations and enhance their collective impact. For ALA, they demonstrate its role as a leading ideas-generator and legal think tank for ASEAN,⁶ and contribute to its expanding calendar of events alongside the ASEAN Law Conference, the ASEAN Moot and the ALA Lecture Series that was launched earlier this year by our President, Tun Maimun. The CACJ, too, can benefit from additional channels for engaging key stakeholders, whose insights can help to inform the direction and development of the CACJ’s workplans and initiatives. And a further advantage for both organisations is that by opening selected events to the public, and in particular to practitioners and in-house counsel, as we did yesterday, these platforms improve the visibility of our work and demonstrate our relevance to our wider community.

12. Such events represent just one dimension of potential collaboration between ALA and the CACJ. The working group that I mentioned a few moments ago and chaired by Justice Lee, will look at other ways to strengthen their interface and to renew the vision for ALA. 

13. Beyond the CACJ, we should also consider the linkages between ALA and the wider ecosystem for legal cooperation in ASEAN. For example, various other instrumentalities also pursue the work of harmonisation, such as the ASEAN Secretariat, the ASEAN Senior Law Officials Meeting and various bilateral arrangements. These efforts, too, would benefit from coordination, and a more holistic approach that would enhance their effectiveness.⁷ I am encouraged by the interest shown in these ideas earlier today and look forward to the fruitful and important discussions that are to come.

14. Let me conclude by thanking all of you for your engagement in the events of the past two days. As I observed at the beginning of my remarks, the progress we have made today should fill all of us with pride and optimism for the future of ALA. But we must seize the moment to ensure that ALA not only remains relevant but becomes indispensable to the development journey of ASEAN. A renewed vision that is suited to the realities of legal practice today and that is anchored in a strengthened relationship with the CACJ will provide a strong foundation for realising this ambition, and that strengthened relationship will underpin the shared mission of both institutions to advance the rule of law and legal cooperation.

15. I wish you a very enjoyable evening as we come together in the unique ASEAN way – and I mean the unique ASEAN way. It is now my great pleasure to invite the Honourable Minister to address us. Thank you very much.