Hiroo Sono's Website

Hiroo Sono

Hiroo Sono is a Professor of Law at Hokkaido University, Japan. Before joining the faculty at Hokkaido University in 2004, he taught at Kanazawa University (1994-1998) and Kyushu University (1998-2004).

His main fields of research interest lay in contract law (including consumer law) and international commercial law. He approaches these fields from the perspective of interaction between private ordering and the regulatory function of private law; and also from the perspective of globally and regionally coordinated developments in commercial law.

Recently, he has been most active in the field of international commercial law. He is one of the founding members of the CISG Advisory Council (CISG-AC) since 2001 and the Global Private Law Forum (GPLF) of Japan since 2014. From 2006 to 2008, he served as Counsellor, Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Justice where he was responsible for Japanfs accession to the CISG. Since 2008 he serves as the Japanese delegate to UNCITRAL Working Group VI (Security Interests).

At Hokkaido University, he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Japanese Civil Law (including contracts, torts, obligations, property, and secured transactions) and International Commercial Law. He also holds seminars to prepare students for the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot competitions.

He holds an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School where he was also visiting scholar in 1990-1991. In 2000-2001, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia School of Law.