Dr. Batongbacal teaches courses on Property, Obligations & Contracts, and Law of the Sea and Natural Resources. A graduate of the UP College of Law, Professor Batongbacal holds a Masters degree in Marine Management and a Doctorate in the Science of Law, both from Dalhousie University in Canada. His graduate degrees were acquired under scholarship grants from the Canadian International Development Agency and the prestigious Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation, respectively.

Taking advantage of his graduate training in inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary studies, his career spans a diverse field of marine policy research. These have included marine territorial and jurisdictional issues, international maritime boundary negotiations, high seas fisheries, seafaring, shipping, marine environmental protection, coastal resource management, maritime security, and archipelagic studies. His doctoral dissertation examined the relationship between ocean energy development and its effects on adjacent coastal communities from the viewpoint of ecological social justice, combining research techniques and methodologies from the social and applied sciences.

Dr. Batongbacal was the legal advisor of the technical team that prepared and successfully pursued the Philippines’ claim to a continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles in the Benham Rise Region. The claim was made in a Submission filed with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf pursuant to the provisions of Article 76 of UNCLOS. The CLCS recognized Philippine jurisdiction over the Benham Rise Region in April 2012.