Keynote Address by Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, and Second Minister for Law, Mr Edwin Tong SC at the IBA Annual Litigation Forum 2025

10 APR 2025

Conference Co-chairs, Mr Carlo Portatadino and Ms Helen Wang

Host Committee Chair, Mr Dinesh Dhillon – my erstwhile colleague

IBA members

Friends

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen

I. Introduction

  1. A really good morning to all of you. We are very privileged to host all of you in Singapore. I would like to echo what the previous speakers have said about how, despite this being held in Asia for the first time, we have such a diverse attendance of 320 members from 48 different jurisdictions. I am told that we have representation from all continents of the world, except Antarctica!
  1. I am really heartened by this strong, diverse turnout, because I really believe that we do need to come together regularly to exchange ideas, share best practices, and on occasions like this, to make new connections and refresh old ones. I call this “de-Zoomification”. We used to, in the COVID era, rely on the efficiency of being able to see each other across continents on Zoom. But whilst it might make for good educational or academic connections, I think it does not make for relational or social connections, which are really so important in our practice as fellow litigators at the Bar.
  1. This is all the more important today, when the world is becoming increasingly fragmented and divided. When countries are really seeking to turn away from win-win cooperation, and deeper integration, I think it becomes even more crucial for the people, including all of us here today, to stay united.

II. The Future of the World

  1. I was a litigator at Allen & Gledhill for 25 years. The topic that I was asked to speak on this morning – the future of litigation – is tantalisingly simple. What is the future like? But I think it is also complex, given what we have seen around the world today.
  1. We have known for some time now that the world is in a state of flux – increasingly uncertain, unsettled, unstable. The rules-based multilateral trading system, which has allowed so many countries to prosper and progress for the last 80 years, in fact since the end of the second World War, is quickly being eroded.
  1. In the last decade alone, we have seen many global events, which have disrupted the world order, divided the world, and changed the way in which we see practice. For example, Brexit in 2016; the US-China trade war, which started growing at a quick pace from 2018; the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck the world in 2020; the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022; and the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups in 2023 – some of these man-made, others are not.
  1. Many international organisations have sounded the alert on rising geopolitical tensions, and the resulting fragmentation of the global economy. This includes the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
  1. Their messages have, over the last few years, been very consistent. The declining support for free trade and open market will shrink global GDP, and we have seen the impact of some of this on the smaller economies in particular. It will also reduce global output, impact the flow of trade, investment and capital, fuel inflation, and hinder progress and development.
  1. We have seen this bear out in the last few years. For example, just take the US-China trade war since 2018. This has contributed, in real terms, to a lowered aggregate real income in both the US and China. It has increased prices for US households by an average of US$1,200 per year. And it has also contributed, in no small means, to China’s slower GDP growth. So, it is a lose-lose situation for both, and in fact, more than both sides, with related parties like Singapore being caught in the crossfire.
  1. We also begin to see countries shift away from a rules-based response to such challenges.

(1) For example, the WTO dispute settlement system has been suspended since 2019, when its Appellate Body ceased to function. I think it is a serious sign when a rules-based system that is adjudicating disputes based on the rule of law has decided that it ought not or cannot function.

(2) Countries like Indonesia, Bolivia, Venezuela, South Africa have taken steps to either terminate their bilateral investment treaties (BITs), or reject the dispute settlement mechanisms in such agreements.

  1. Businesses operating across borders thus find themselves without access to immediate legal recourse, whilst facing increasing number of trade restrictions imposed by parties.
  1. As all of you would be aware, the sheer scope and scale of trade restrictions have increased exponentially recently, with “Liberation Day” tariffs on all trading partners. Of course, we all woke up this morning to a 90-day pause, literally within hours of the tariffs coming into effect.
  1. Economists have calculated the average effective tariff rate to be over 23%. If you look at the original tariff announcements which have been suspended, these range from a minimum of 10% tariff on countries like Singapore, which was put on us, despite us having a trade deficit relationship with the US, to steep and perhaps intolerable levels for countries like China, which is the exception to the suspension that was announced overnight. We now look at tariffs at 125%. If you look at the volume of trade between the US and China, you can begin to calculate the consequential impact it will have on suppliers downstream, upstream, and related parties.
  1. Earlier this year, the IMF estimated that a universal rise of just 10% in US tariffs, accompanied by some measure of retaliation from China and from the EU, could reduce global GDP by about 0.5% through 2026. That was the impact of tariffs alone, excluding other inflationary trends.
  1. We have already begun to see the impact, although it has been less than a week since the “Liberation Day” announcements.

(1) Stock and equity markets have collapsed sharply after the 2nd April announcements. Of course, overnight, they have now soared – S&P500, Dow. But the question that we have to ask ourselves is, is this rise back in value really based on value? Or was it based on volatile announcements that have been made? Uncertainty and unpredictability are concepts that the business community does not want or like. You can have bad news, you can understand down the road that there are changes in regulations or laws that affect the way in which you might do business. But volatility and unpredictability are completely anathema to open business concepts.

(2) China has now responded with its own reciprocal tariffs. It remains to be seen whether other countries will follow suit.

(3) Researchers from J.P. Morgan have increased their forecast of the risk of a global recession to 40%, up from 30% at the start of 2025.

  1. What does this all mean for us?

(1) In the short to medium term, we can expect a significant global decline in economic activity.

(2) Some of the multinational corporations and local businesses in Singapore – we keep in touch with the Singapore businesses in a very tight way, because they are on the pulse, they feel the ground, they feel the movements – and they tell us that they have put new projects on hold. They are assessing the full implications of the tariffs.

(3) I am sure similar conversations are happening right around the world.

  1. That said, I believe, coming back to this topic today, that globalisation will survive. We are too advanced down that road on multilateralism, globalisation, having an open economy for this not to survive.
  1. It will have an impact on the future of litigation.
  1. Trade will no longer be guided by principles of economic efficiency and comparative advantage. Rather, issues such as political alignment and strategic considerations will begin to drive business considerations. There will be, in the near term, more “friend-shoring” and “near-shoring”. This, of course, will have impact on the contracts that we need to enforce.
  1. Businesses will react by seeking new and emerging markets, and will have to find a way to adapt to this new equilibrium. The new businesses may end up re-ordering around nodes and trusted business hubs, where networks of like-minded countries, bound together by political ideology and political support – rather than economic efficiency – might then drive trade behaviour.
  1. Therefore, while the shape of the new global system is still in a state of flux, still uncertain and still finding its level, there will, I believe, continue to be international commercial transactions within this new order. There will still be cross-border legal work and disputes.
  1. This brings me to the topic of the day – the future of litigation.

III. The Future of Litigation

  1. All of us as practitioners, I think we know law does not exist in a vacuum. It exists because there are commercial transactions. Law follows businesses.
  1. Hence, the increased global trade in the last few decades has corresponded to a rise in the internationalisation of commercial disputes. This is evidenced by the upward trend in the volume of cross-border investment and commercial disputes handled by international institutions right around the world. I think we will need our dispute resolution institutions to serve more and more of the international community.
  1. Let me give you some examples:

(1) The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which all of us will be familiar with. The decade beginning 1993 saw 86 new cases. The next decade, from 2003 to 2012, saw 305 cases. And in the last decade, that has doubled to 603.

(2) The number of claims filed in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has also grown – 39 cases in 2006, 111 cases in 2012, and last year in 2024, a 10-fold increase to 1,056 cases. I think this underscores two points. First, the increasing importance and relevance of the Middle Eastern economy and as a jurisdiction, and second, reflecting the way in which business is done and disputes are resolved internationally.

(3) The English Commercial Court has also seen an increase in its caseload over time, with about 75% of its cases involving one or more parties outside the UK.

  1. It was in this context that, 10 years ago, we decided to set up the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). We recognised the increasing prominence of international disputes in Singapore. Earlier on, you heard Dinesh talk about Singapore – in the context of Southeast Asia and Asia – as a hub, as a node, in, from and through which parties are encouraged to do business.
  1. We grew the SICC over the years to meet the increasing demands of the international community. Since then, we have seen an increase in the internationalisation of the dispute resolution cases that come through Singapore. I know tomorrow’s programme will bring you to the SICC, so I thought I’ll say a few things about the SICC.
  1. When the SICC started in 2015, it had two transferred cases in its inaugural year, i.e. cases transferred from the Supreme Court of Singapore to the SICC. In 2024, the total number of cases heard by the SICC stood at 28, with 18 of them being fresh filings. Cases before the SICC involved parties coming from 62 different nationalities, reflecting, and as I said, underscoring the “international-ness” of the forum.
  1. The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), has also seen a similar trend – a rise in caseload from around 200 cases a decade ago, to more than 600 cases today. Last year, SIAC received 625 cases from 72 different jurisdictions, of which 91% of those cases were international in nature.
  1. It is, I believe, important for dispute resolution institutions to be able to handle cross border disputes, and to be increasingly open to the fact that users of their system might not come from within its own domicile and its own jurisdiction. In this way, we designed the SICC quite deliberately to be able to handle cases that have a different genre and come from a different origin than what we are used to in Singapore.
  1. Earlier, we heard speeches of the development of the common law by great jurists like Lord Denning, but we have decided that in Singapore, where more than half of our trading partners that we do business with come from civil law jurisdictions, we do need to embrace civil law concepts, understand civil law practices, and also, in many ways, understand not just the legal background, but the cultural context and nuances that exist in these countries.
  1. So we have deliberately designed the SICC to have an international panel comprising eminent jurists from both common law, as well as civil law jurisdictions.
  1. We allow foreign lawyers and legal experts a right of audience directly before the Court, for example, in large international restructuring cases, many of which are deeply cross-border in nature. Having been in practice in this space, we may see some arbitrage being taken advantage of between different jurisdictions. You might have a case that is in Singapore on a restructuring, but you might have corresponding proceedings elsewhere, and we want to reduce that arbitrage as much as possible. So we allow for foreign lawyers and experts to have right of audience at the SICC.
  1. We have also allowed procedural flexibility in how parties may conduct their cases.
  1. We now have 24 International Judges who serve alongside our local judges on the SICC Bench. Our International Judges complement our Singapore Judges by being able to hear disputes governed by foreign law, with their deep experience, having specialist knowledge in specialised areas of commercial law, allowing us to enhance the reputation of the SICC, levelling up its thought leadership, and by and large, attracting foreign parties to litigate or to have their cases heard here in Singapore.

IV. What Lies Ahead - Singapore’s Approach

  1. With this, it brings me to conclude with some observations of what Singapore’s approach has been over the years, and what we see in light of today’s geopolitical situation, economic climate, as well as the trading relations and the disruption to the rules-based order. I thought I would share, having moved from practice into policy-making over the last few years, Singapore’s perspective on how we see the legal industry in Singapore.
  1. First, as we look at an increasingly insular and protectionist world, protecting themselves with tariffs and barriers, we think that we need to go the opposite direction. We need to be completely open, or as open as possible. We need to maintain an open approach, not just in our economy, but particularly relevant to all of you, in our legal industry.
  1. We do this in a number of ways. We recognise that parties, litigants, their counsel want a choice.
  1. As I mentioned earlier, we have a broad, diverse panel on the SICC, and foreign counsel can appear before the SICC on matters of foreign law.
  1. We also have a broad range of different arbitrators and mediators on SIAC and SIMC. We resolve to bring in the best arbitrators onto the panel on SIAC, and are agnostic to their nationality. As long as they can bring value, have stature, be selected by parties, and give good awards, efficient, timely, we invite them onto the SIAC panel.
  1. We have also allowed, over the years, foreign lawyers and foreign law firms to be set up in Singapore to actively practise foreign law, and they can now directly participate in arbitration proceedings, even those involving Singapore law. The number of foreign lawyers practising in Singapore has grown over the decades. We started various schemes, more formally in 2000 so it has been 25 years, and we have seen the number of foreign lawyers grow in Singapore – four-fold since 2000.
  1. Our second approach is to continue to maintain a very fleet-footed approach, to be nimble, to be able to move fast in response to international changes, and more importantly, mercantile and commercial changes. That also comes in the form of how we look at setting up legal institutions, dispute resolution institutions, as well as the changes involved.
  1. The first example is the SICC. I mentioned that we set it up in 2015, but it was barely two years prior when it was first mooted by our Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon at the Opening of the Legal Year in 2013. We saw a gap, and we understood that it needed to be done quickly. And within two years, the legislation, the framework, the structure, and the personalities were in place to set up the SICC.
  1. Another example is in the passing of legislation. One of the advantages we have in Singapore is it is a small community and, I guess comparatively, a small Parliament, and one which allows us to move and respond very quickly. In the immediate aftermath of COVID-19, we realised that we had to protect lives and livelihoods. So we passed, on an emergency basis, COVID-19 legislation to effect changes, to change the ways in which contracts can be varied, to change the ways in which landlords and tenants could vary their arrangements, because there were many, particularly food and beverage offerings, that were unable to open by reason of legal imposition. So we passed the first legislation in Parliament in just 9 days.
  1. More importantly, in response to the tariff announcements on Liberation Day, we set up quickly a multi-agency taskforce, to study the impact of tariffs on our commercial entities, both large and small ones, and to help businesses respond and adapt, in the wake of these tariffs.
  1. Third, I think we need to continue to take a collaborative approach, looking at valued partners like the IBA, like many other thought leader institutions that are based in Singapore. Those of you who are familiar with the Maxwell Chambers will know that besides being a venue for dispute resolution, whether it is an arbitration or mediation, it also houses some of the world’s top legal thought leaders – WIPO, PCA, ICC, AAA-ICDR, INSOL. They all have offices at Maxwell Chambers. We believe in them, we support many of these organisations in setting up, sometimes subventing the office space. Because we believe in the value of having thought leaders from around the world in Singapore collaborate with us, think of ideas, and also come to speak to us about changes that they see on the horizon that might impact the way in which we organise ourselves and develop our policies.
  1. It is also important that Singapore looks at the multilateral world and continue to play our part in supporting the rules-based model on a global scale. So we have played a part in the Singapore Convention on Mediation in 2018, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (or BBNJ) Agreement in 2023 that was signed after many years of negotiation, and more recently, the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources, and Associated Traditional Knowledge. These and other examples demonstrate and underscore Singapore’s commitment to a rules-based order, as well as to the international legal community.
  1. This international outlook is also seen in our courts. We continue to engage our foreign counterparts. We continue to be engaged in dialogue. We look at collaborative measures to ensure that our judicial system is also plugged into developments and advancements around the rest of the world.
  1. To give you one example, we are a proud member of the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN). This helps to facilitate cross-border insolvency disputes, by allowing insolvency courts, even if you might not have rights of audience for foreign counsel in all jurisdictions, it allows the insolvency courts, to share documents, to share information, and on some occasion, through the use of technology, have joint hearings. So you might have a hearing in Singapore, and you might have a foreign court dial in by electronic means, on Zoom or Skype, and conduct the hearing jointly. So that, on common issues, as I said, we do not allow parties to arbitrage against one another.
  1. Last year, our Parliament passed legislation to establish the International Committee of the SICC, a designated body in Singapore, comprising local and international judges that will hear appeals of international commercial cases from prescribed foreign courts. The first collaboration under this model is between Singapore and Bahrain, as a model for future partnerships, which we are open to exploring.

V. Conclusion

  1. As I wrap up, let me just make a few comments on what I see as the future of litigation. Previously coming from the litigation community, I guess I am somewhat biased, but I believe in the resilience and adaptability of the litigation community.
  1. We have seen the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2009 Lehman crisis, the 2020 COVID-19, and I just outlined, in the last decade, a series of significant global disruptors. We have adapted, we have adjusted, and we have taken on new work in a new paradigm in new jurisdictions. There might be technology and AI in dispute resolution. There might be newer modalities. There might be new areas like the green economy and green financing, which perhaps were not present 10, 15 years ago. But the litigation community has taken them on board.
  1. The one secret sauce to all of this, I believe, is in networking. That is why a session like today is so important. An old friend once told me this – knowledge is good, know-how is better, but “know who” is best. Today’s session is really about the “know who”. As you network, you make friends and develop contacts from different parts of the world, practising different areas of law. I think that is all so important.
  1. Besides what Dinesh said earlier, I encourage you to take some time outside of the formal programme to make friends, to build contacts and to expand those networks. I think you will become truly invaluable in a world that is oftentimes fragmented by very insular and very navel-gazing perspectives. I wish all of you the very best.
  1. Wearing now my culture and art ministry hat, take some time to enjoy the cultural enclave that is literally a short hop away from this hotel, which itself has deep significant cultural and heritage history. Thank you very much.

Last updated on 10 April 2025