Research

Aerial view of a busy shipping port with numerous shipping containers, cranes, and ships docked at the harbor.

Pillar 1: Legal and Economic Organizations of Global Supply Chains

World map focusing on Southeast Asia, highlighting the Philippines, Taiwan, and parts of China and Vietnam.

Pillar 2: Middle Powers’ Uses and Visions of International Law

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Pillar 3: Comparative Business Law in Asia

My research agenda develops along three mutually reinforcing pillars.

The first and primary pillar examines how firms in global supply chains navigate and shape law through their corporate form, contractual practices, and economic arrangements.

The second pillar examines how middle powers in Asia and elsewhere use economic institutions and international law to maintain stability and assert agency amid great-power competition.

The third, grounded in my long-running commitment to comparative law in Asia, explores how business governance frameworks are co-produced by state and societal actors and how global models adapt to local settings.

All three share a common sensibility: I combine expertise across fields—from corporate law and global supply-chain regulation to new security thinking—to open fresh pathways for research. Methodologically, I pair doctrinal analysis with political-economy and institutional insight, drawing on corporate records, legislative and regulatory materials, and research across multiple languages.

My full research agenda is available upon request.

  • Laws for the Wild Geese: Coordinating Regional Industrial Policy in Asia (in progress)

  • Legal Hedging from the Periphery: Uses and Visions of International Law from Southeast Asia (revise and resubmit, Journal of International Economic Law)

  • International Law in Party Prose: A Corpus Study of Vietnam’s Party Documents (revise and resubmit, Leiden Journal of International Law)

  • Economic Integration and Trade Law in Asia: Theories and Models, in Oxford Handbook on International Trade Law in Asia (Julien Chaisse, Georgios Dimitropoulos, Han-Wei Liu & Intan Murnira Ramli eds., Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027) (invited)

Works in Progress

Journal Articles

  1. Goods’ Nationalities, 99 Southern California Law Review 895–944 (2026)

  2. Alternate Prisms of Goods’ Nationalities, 26 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 111–132 (2026) (invited contribution for the Laws of Global Value Chains symposium)

  3. From Product Nationality to Corporate Identity, 49 Seattle University Law Review 491–514 (2026) (invited contribution for the Berle XVII Corporate Law symposium)

  4. Global Company Towns, 96 University of Colorado Law Review 75–129 (2025) (featured on the Business Scholarship Podcast)

  5. Hidden Power in Global Supply Chains, 64 Harvard International Law Journal 35–84 (2023) (ComplianceNet Outstanding Junior Scholar Paper Award)

  6. International Law as Hedging: Perspectives from Secondary Authoritarian States, 114 American Journal of International Law Unbound 237–241 (2020) (invited symposium contribution)

  7. Co-Constructing Business Governance, 31 Stanford Law & Policy Review 143–186 (2020) (featured on the Oxford Business Law Blog)

  8. In Search of Judicial Legitimacy: Criminal Sentencing in Vietnamese Courts, 32 Harvard Human Rights Journal 147–188 (2019)

  9. Grading Regulators: The Impact of Global and Local Indicators on Vietnam’s Business Governance, 88 New York University Law Review 2254–2285 (2013)

  1. Inter-Asia’s Company Towns, in Inter-Asian Law (Matthew Erie & Ching-Fu Lin eds., Cambridge University Press 2025) (invited)

  2. Vietnam’s Responses to COVID-19: Local Governance and Bureaucratic Coordination, in International Comparative Analysis of Early COVID-19 Responses (Dong-Young Kim & M. Jae Moon eds., Taylor & Francis 2024) (invited)

  3. State-Owned Enterprises in Vietnam’s 2013 Constitution, in Asian Comparative Constitutional Law, Volume I: Constitution-Making (Bui Ngoc Son & Mara Malagodi eds., Hart Publishing 2023) (invited)

  4. From Revolutions to COVID-19: Policing Narratives in Vietnam, in Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (Weitseng Chen & Hualing Fu eds., Cambridge University Press 2023) (invited)

  5. Vietnam: Soft Emergency Power, in 2020 International Review of Constitutional Reform (Luis Roberto Barroso & Richard Albert eds., 2021) (with Le Duy Hau & Vu Cong Giao)

Book Chapters

Selected Presentations

  • Harvard Law School

  • Stanford Law School

  • New York University School of Law, U.S.-Asia Law Institute

  • University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Center for the Study of Contemporary China

  • University of Chicago Law School

  • University of Michigan Law School

  • Georgetown University Law Center

  • Duke Law School

  • University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

  • National University of Singapore Faculty of Law

  • Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law

  • European Journal of International Law–Journal of International Economic Law Joint Symposium

  • American Society of International Law Research Forum, Annual Meeting & Legal Theory Forum

  • American Society of Comparative Law Annual Meeting & Younger Comparativists’ Forum

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(1) Presenting at the Asian Law Institute at the National University of Singapore (2019), (2) Presenting at Harvard Law School, with thanks to Professor Bill Alford for the invitation (2022), (3) Presenting at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, with thanks to Dean Fu Hualing and Associate Dean Liu Sida for the invitation (2024)