ANNUAL CONFERENCE: ACADEMIC & JUDICIAL SESSION
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The III Judicial Committee Upcoming Initiatives By Aidan Xu and Verónica Francisca Martínez
Following the Judicial Committee meeting held in Montreal immediately prior to the Institute’ s 26 th Annual Conference, the Committee reaffirmed its commitment to developing practical resources to assist judges in addressing the challenges of cross-border insolvency. Building on the discussions held during that meeting, the Committee is pleased to share the following summary of the topics considered.
The Judicial Committee of the International Insolvency Institute has begun a new programme of work aimed at helping judges in dealing with live issues in international insolvency law. The work is distinct from other efforts as it 34is focused on sharing of practical knowledge and expertise, for immediate use and reference by judges. Many questions confronting the courts are often worked, under pressure of time, without the benefit of how they may have been dealt with elsewhere. The Judicial Committee’ s work aims to remedy that.
The importance of Distinct Judicial Perspective
The field of cross-border insolvency is already served by a number of established bodies, such as UNCITRAL, INSOL International and the Judicial Insolvency Network. The academic community, and the III’ s own Academic Committee, explores frontier issues in depth, assisting judges with exploration of novel areas.
Within that community, the III Judicial Committee is uniquely placed because of the
membership of experienced and eminent judges from the leading insolvency jurisdictions around the world, allowing it to focus on assisting all judges by sharing that accumulated knowledge. Building on the previous work of the Judicial Committee, the current membership, co-chaired by Verónica Francisca Martínez( Argentina), and Aidan Xu( Singapore), aims to make a practical difference to the work of judges. The members of the committee are able to glean from the cases before them the patterns, tactics and common arguments that arise in practice, and to articulate the considerations that influence judicial decision-making. This enables the Committee to describe the practical realities of cross-border insolvency cases and to identify approaches that address their real-world implications.
The Committee is confident that this work will advance the III’ s overall objectives of improving international cooperation and to achieve greater coordination among nations in cross-border reorganisations and restructurings.
The aim is to produce a series of Judicial Issues Papers addressing questions of international insolvency. These papers will be concise, practical, and consultative, setting out questions that regularly come before judges, identifying recurring factual and legal patterns across cases, and exploring the considerations relevant to their resolution. Their purpose is to provide judges encountering such issues for the first time with insight into how other judges have approached and reasoned through them. The papers are not intended to prescribe rules, but rather to inform and support judicial reasoning. The Inaugural Paper For its first cycle of work the Committee has identified forum selection in group restructurings under the Model Law as an area of interest.
The UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border