Sean David Yates

• MA (Oxon.), English Language and Literature,  New College, University of Oxford
• Common Professional Examination, Westminster University
• Bar Vocational Course, Law, Inns of Court School of Law (ICSL)
• Called to the Bar of England and Wales, Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, 1996
• Diploma, Commercial Law, Law, Northumbria University
• Master of Laws (LLM), International Commercial Law, Northumbria University

After reading English at Oxford, I undertook the conversion course at Westminster University, attended Bar School at the Inns of Court School of law and was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 1996. I practiced at the independent Bar for ten years before relocating to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2006.

While in Dubai I undertook an LLM by distance learning at Northumbria University.

I have worked both in house and in private practice in Dubai and am currently General Counsel for China State Construction Engineering Corporation Middle East.

PhD title

International Commercial and their Domestic Relations

Supervisors

Professor Robert Lee and Dr Sophie Boyron

My proposition is that the successful reception of new international commercial courts in their host jurisdictions is significantly affected by two key factors, the extent of prior public consultation and the level of participation by local practitioners and jurists. Such participation is in turn impacted by the new courts’ choice of language and by law family affinity as between the received law and procedures and that of the host jurisdiction’s primary legal order. 

The review of the new courts allows challenges to be made to some current legal theories, especially those within the areas of diffusion and comparative law studies. For example, the claim that law family differences are converging and are of lesser importance is questioned when they preclude participation in the new courts by existing local advocates. Another challenge is to the idea that the transplantation process is more important than the thing being transplanted. This study suggests that a new court which competes for work with domestic courts is predetermined to face integration difficulties regardless of the method of its introduction.