RESEARCH

My academic backgrounds featured strongly on business or commercial law, with particular emphasis on maritime law. Whilst my PhD thesis was on marine insurance law, I am very much willing to research into and analyse problems in admiralty law or maritime law in general. As far as my PhD research could be described, it focused on the contemporary problems from the doctrine of the utmost good faith (uberrmae fidei) and the duty of disclosure - two significant principles in marine insurance law (and indeed in insurance law in general), the origin of which has been suggested to be derived from the judgment of Lord Mansfield in Carter v. Boehm (1755) 3 Burr. 1905 and are codified  in ss.17-20 of the Marine Insurance Act 1906 ("MIA") (Hong Kong equivalent - Marine Insurance Ordinance (Cap.329). It has been of the view among judges, academic commentators, and lawyers alike that these principles are somewhat rigid and create injustices and reform must be undertaken. Numerous case laws have addressed the problems and now reform of these is underway along the joint project of the English and the Scottish Law Commissions.

Problems concerning the law on the duty of disclosure may be summarised in two significant aspects. First, the law states essentially that the assured needs to provide the insurer with 'material' information prior to the conclusion of a marine insurance contract. Which fact can be seen as material, the law rests upon a consideration of the 'prudent insurer', which is a hypothetical reasonably experienced insurer. It is therefore in practice hard for the assured to determine the fact he must disclose. Whilst revealing all information is commercially unfeasible, the law further states that, upon the failure of the assured to disclose material information, the insurer is having a right to avoid the contract from the beginning, so-called avoidance ab initio - regardless of the assured's degree of culpability. These two features are fixed by the language of the MIA. Therefore, my thesis assessed justifications for reform to the MIA and how the relevant provisions should be amended.

In doing so, the comparative approach was adopted into my thesis by considering the solutions identified in other jurisdictions to see whether some of these may be adopted in the UK if reform will be introduced. Proposals from the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) recommended some changes to the Marine Insurance Act 1909 (Cth), a statute which is virtually identical to the MIA, were considered. Legal thoughts from South Africa were also explored since historically the laws in this jurisdiction were heavily influenced by the English legal system, even though one may suggest that this jurisdiction has adopted a mixed legal system due to the equal influence from the Roman-Dutch laws. It has been suggested in South Africa that the doctrine of the utmost good faith in insurance law should not be recognised and that insurance contracts should be rested on the standard of the 'reasonable man'. My research also extended to the relevant provisions of the Norwegian Marine Insurance Plan of 1996, the legal instrument which contains more flexible approach to the duty of disclosure and stipulates less stringent remedial system but its legal status is just a standard contractual term, not a statute. This challenges statutory reform to the MIA.

My thesis concluded from comparative perspective that none of the approaches identified in other jurisdictions are without problems. It further discovered that judges and academic commentators post-Lord Mansfield's era have failed to realise his Lordship's original intention in Carter v. Boehm. It traced the background of Lord Mansfield and argued, among other things, that his Lordship was heavily influenced by the "Natural Law School of Thought". Support of this can be gleaned from Latin terms he quoted in his judgment which in turn could be traced to the work of a renowned natural philosopher, Cicero, in his famous literature, De Officiis. Therefore, my thesis proceeded to re-interpret the judgment of Lord Mansfield against such backgrounds and proposed that the term 'utmost good faith'  has no significant meanings attached to it and, like in South Africa, marine insurance contracts should be based upon the wide notion of justice and fairness recognised in the concept of good faith (bonae fidei) and that Lord Mansfield mentioned 'concealment' in terms of deliberate non-disclosure only. Following these, it further proposed the abolition of the remedy of avoidance in s.17 of the MIA and instead discretion should be granted to the courts to determine the remedy appropriate to the circumstances in each individual case. However, the remedy of avoidance should be retained in s.18 but the scope of the duty to disclose should be re-formulated to reflect Lord Mansfield's understanding and, to this extent, the remedy has a policing function to sanction the conduct with 'moral guilt'. On the basis of fairness, damages should be available for the assured in case of non-disclosure by the insurer and conceptually nothing seems to bar the operation of such remedy except the current language of the MIA. In my thesis, on the basis that reform will be undertaken, the draft provisions were presented and recommended.

As the MIA has been understood to codify some aspects of the 'common law' on insurance and therefore the provisions in the statute also govern non-marine insurance in relevant respects the question then is whether there should be a separate statute for non-marine insurance or else for consumer insurance. My future research will address this question in light of the unclear sign and direction from the existing project of the English and the Scottish Law Commissions.

Non-marine insurance  - In the context of 'non-marine insurance', my research will be focusing on approaches for reform identified in some previous reports of the Law Commission as well as existing joint project of the English and the Scottish Law Commissions. Comparative analysis will be adopted with the application of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) of Australia and the on-going project of the European Working Group on the Restatement of Insurance Contract Law to produce the "Unified Mandatory Principles of European Insurance Contract Law". Publications to discuss potential advantages and problems of each of these approaches are expected to be produced at the later stage in the form of journal articles.

Marine Insurance - It is not entirely clear in the UK whether statutory reform to marine insurance legal regime will happen at all in light of the fact that not much emphasis is placed by the English and the Scottish Law Commissions and arguably parties may evade from the harsh consequences of the relevant provisions of the MIA by individual agreement. My research, which is developed from my PhD thesis submitted to the University of Leicester, will explore some potential routes to marine insurance law reform. In doing so, voluminous case laws which reflect contemporaneous legal problems in many areas of marine insurance law will be analysed. The comparative approach with the Australian Law Reform Commission's proposals on the reform of the Marine Insurance Act 1909 (Cth) will be maintained. The analysis of cases will be published in legal journals as well as on-line whilst comments on any reform proposals will be made in monograph format.

The above-mentioned research plans are on-going in nature and will not be limited to the aspect of the doctrine of the utmost good faith. Instead, my research will be extended to other contentious issues in marine / non-marine insurance law, such as breaches of warranties and claims. I also conduct my researches more broadly in the realm of admiralty and maritime law. 

It has always been my passion to become a lecturer in an international university as it is perhaps what my PhD qualification and research skills can be mostly utilised. In terms of teaching, I believe students should benefit from the expertise of academic staffs and such expertise can only be gained through research. Therefore, research and teaching should go hand-in-hand. My tentative view on teaching is that style needs to be flexible according to each classroom situation and each subject.  As I know, most institutions employ either lecture or tutorial method or both in teaching and learning, the style of teaching should be adapted to each method accordingly.

In terms of classroom lecture, my tentative view is that the role of it is to allow lecturers to emphasise significant legal issues to students and the gist of the subject-matter should be succinctly concluded. Otherwise, conducting classroom lecture will be no different from reading academic textbooks in front of students. As such, the lecturer must devote his / her time to prepare so that each lesson can flow logically to ensure students can make notes with ease. Emphasis must be placed on different legal issues and important cases should be explained in some details but too technical details inappropriate to the level should be omitted and irrelevant issues do not have to be mentioned in the class. Tools such as PowerPoint are certainly useful.

Regarding tutorial, I see it as a multi-purpose exercise. It is a good opportunity for tutor to re-emphasise some complex issues which students may miss out during the lecture and also a good chance to test students' understanding of the subject-matter and small group-teaching additionally provides a tutor with a chance to observe each individual student's style of learning and his/her attention. Each session can be used to developed students' critical thinking skills, research skills, and even team-working skills. Therefore, different activities and teaching styles should be used in each tutorial session. For example, students may be assigned with group activity and report back to the whole class in the next session. The tutor should prepare to step in if students give seemingly wrong answer to the assignment. If the assignment contains more than one possible answer, then it should be discussed by the whole class and the role of the tutor should be to conclude the gist of each view on the matter. But, such group activity should not be done in all tutorial sessions. Instead, in some sessions, individual student may be asked to give answer to one of the questions set to test his/her preparation for the class and his/her understanding of the subject matter. For some questions, students may be encouraged to seek for answer by doing small researches and the tutor may check what they have found in the next session. The tutor may advise students of some materials which they may be unaware of.

To this end, I think research skills and ability to think independently are important to students' development as good lawyers as law itself is a dynamic matter and students should be equipped with skills which they can use throughout their entire career. However, one challenging question to be considered is how one can ensure that students will apply 'law' in the right way. Students should thus be instilled with morality and ethic. This is exactly my role in the capacity of both a lecturer and a personal tutor. As well as law, teaching style itself is dynamic and it is always useful for a person in a teaching profession to know and attempt to develop various teaching techniques. I think that as a lecturer I should also seriously try to learn all pedagogy. 

From my research and teaching interests described above, I am keen to teach on the subjects relevant to my research area. To this extent, "Shipping Law" is directly relevant. I can also take up a wider course on "International Business Transactions". As maritime law is always international in nature involving many jurisdictions, therefore by default I research into "Private International Law" and am very eager to teach this subject. As in the end the relationship between parties in international trade is governed by general contract law in the absence of specific rules, I am also willing to take up a teaching on "Contract". Being a person who has been trained in common law traditions for over six years, I can also take up the course on "Common Law: Tradition and Method". Moreover, I am also interested in doing some teachings on "Jurisprudence" or "Legal Philosophies" , especially since I adopted the idea of 'natural law' into my PhD thesis and from time to time I do read some relevant materials out of my personal interests. Last, but not least, since my PhD thesis contained comparative perspective, I see myself suitable for teaching "Comparative Legal Traditions", a course which focuses on methodology. On the more general basis, I can also teach a course on research methodology and supervise research projects.