UP LAW FACULTY

Assistant Professor

Jacqueline Joyce F. ESPENILLA

jfespenilla@up.edu.ph

(+632) 8 920 5514 loc.218

EDUCATION

Harvard Law School, Master of Laws

University of the Philippines, Juris Doctor

University of the Philippines, College of Mass Communications

PROFILE

Jacqueline Joyce F. Espenilla is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law. She is concurrently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea (UP-IMLOS), as well as the Chairperson of the newly-established Environmental Law Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) and a Professorial Lecturer II in the PHILJA Corps of Professors.

Assistant Professor Espenilla recently served as the Director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Government and Law Reform (UP-IGLR), the Director of the UP-IMLOS, and Assistant to the Dean for Student Affairs. She was also the former Chairperson of the International Maritime Law Department of PHILJA. Before joining the academe, she was a Senior Attorney at the Department of Justice under the Office of the Secretary, and a Legal Research Consultant at the Asian Development Bank Office of the General Counsel.

She completed resident legal research fellowships on ocean governance and the marine environment at the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea, at Columbia Law School, and at the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law. She was also the first Filipino legal intern at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany.

She regularly serves as a government resource person on a range of maritime and environmental issues, and has in the past provided legal advice to several government agencies and committees, including the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Presidential Office for Maritime Concerns, the National Security Council, and the Special Senate Committee on Maritime and Admiralty Zones. Notably, she served as one of the Legal Advisers of the Philippine Delegation for the intergovernmental negotiations of the new, international legally-binding instrument for conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (the BBNJ Agreement).

Assistant Professor Espenilla received her LL.M. from Harvard Law School in the United States, and her J.B. and B.A. from the University of the Philippines. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation at Utrecht University School of Law in the Netherlands where she is a Ph.D. Candidate at its Faculty Law, Economics, and Governance.

PUBLICATIONS

Book Chapters

Contribution of Dispute Settlement Mechanisms to the Development of the Law of the Sea for the Safety of Navigation, in Dispute Settlement Mechanisms: UNCLOS’ Indispensable Guardians, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Routledge: New York (forthcoming 2025).

Philippines, in the Encyclopedia of Ocean Law and Policy (Seokwoo Lee, ed.), Leiden: Brill/Nijhoff, ISBN 9789004506299 (hardback), pp. 376-440. (Nov. 2022)

Seafaring in the Time of COVID-19: Understanding Protection Gaps for the Ocean’s Invisible Workforce, published in Q1 2022 by CNR Edizioni, the publishing division of the National Research Council of Italy, ISBN 978-88-8080-348-5

MEA Compliance and Enforcement via Green Courts and the Rules of Procedure for Environmental Cases and Marine Protected Areas, in the Philippine chapter of the Encyclopedia of Public International Law (EPILA), Brill Publishing (2021)

The Philippines-China Joint Development in “The South China Sea: From a Regional Maritime Dispute to Geo-Strategic Competition”, Leszek Buszynski and Do Thanh Hai (eds.), Routledge: New York, pp. 93-107 (2020)

Journal Articles

Next-Generation Surveillance Approaches to Combatting IUU Fishing in Southeast Asia, Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law Special Issue on Law of the Sea in the ASEAN Maritime Domain (forthcoming, June 2025)

Capacity-building under the BBNJ Agreement: Benefits, Opportunities and Implementation Challenges for Southeast Asia (co-authored with Dr. Sarah Lothian, Dr. Zaki Mubarok, and Dr. Ahmad Almadudy Amri), Blue Security: A Maritime Affairs Series, Issue 10 (January 2025)

A New Protocol on Fisheries Subsidies: Potential Implications for the South China Sea Disputes, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 8, (2023

The Philippines: New Rules for the Implementation of Vessel Management Measures in the Philippines, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 6 (2021)

Sharing Fish: The Philippine Experience, Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 8 (2020): Issue 2

Illegal Fishing During Lockdown: Response Options Under Philippine Law, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 5 (2020): Issue 2

Area-Based Marine Protection in the Philippines: The MPA Experience, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 5 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Adoption of New Rules of Procedure for Admiralty Cases, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 5 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Philippines Law Reform Initiatives Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, Asia Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy, Vol. 4 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2019)

Judicial Fact-Finding Initiatives in the South China Sea Arbitration, Asian Journal of International Law (May 2018).

Expanding the Right of Hot Pursuit: Challenges for Cooperative Maritime Law Enforcement Between the Philippines and Indonesia, Korea Maritime Institute Journal of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Vol. 9, Issue 1 (2017 June)

Disaster, Displacement, and Duty: The Application of International Human Rights Law to Philippine Relief and Recovery. 84 PHIL L.J. 956 (2010)

Injustice Ignored: A Case Study of the Irregular Sea Migration of the Rohingyan Boat People. Vol.8 No.1 of the Asia Europe Journal (2010)

OP-EDS

RI-Philippine cooperation in fighting illegal fishing, The Jakarta Post (2016 December)

Does negotiating with China make sense for the Philippines?, Policy Forum (2016 July)

The Rise of Defense Diplomacy in the South China Sea. East West Center Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 349 (2016 June).

Reality Check: Who Lacks Self-Restraint in the South China Sea. The Diplomat (2016 June)

China’s Reckless South China Sea Strategy Won’t Work. The National Interest (2016 June)

Abductions at Sea: A Three-Way Security Challenge for Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, The Diplomat (2016 May)

WORKING PAPERS, REPORTS, ESSAYS

A New Treaty on Plastic Pollution – Perspectives from Asia, co-authors: Stockhaus, H; Sachdeva, A; Sina, S; Bolopion, E; Mislang, G; Espenilla, J; Guiao, C.T.; Sulistiawati, L.Y; Poppattanachai, N. published by WWF-World Wildlife Fund for Nature (Singapore) Limited. (2021)

Escalation and De-escalation: Approaches to the South China Sea Tensions, United Nations-Nippon Foundation of Japan

Access, Conservation, and Sustainable Use of Marine Genetic Resources in Areas Beyond National

Jurisdiction: Emerging Issues of Consensus and Contention, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law – Field Report

Mulqueeny, K., Bonifacio, S. and Espenilla, J. (2012 June). Environmental Governance and the Courts in Asia: An Asian Judges Network on the Environment, ADB Law and Policy Reform Brief No.1

Mulqueeny, K., Bonifacio, S. and Espenilla J. (2010). Asian Judges, Green Courts, and Access to Environmental Justice: An Asian Judges Network on the Environment. 3 J. Ct. Innovation 277 (2010)