This Week in Asian Law
Yuan Gao
This Week in Asian Law

Chinese universities conduct a nationwide audit of retracted academic papers; Hong Kong courts sentence more defendants in cases stemming from the 2019 protests; LGBTQ activists in Japan advocate for equal marriage rights on Valentine’s Day; South Korea convicts three former police officers for destroying evidence linked to a fatal crowd crush in Seoul on Halloween 2022; Taiwan solicits public input for the next phase of its Open Government National Action Plan.

NYU, NYU Law, Awards
Alexis Sanborn
Faculty Director José E. Alvarez elected to the ...

USALI Faculty Director José E. Alvarez has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies in the United States. He is among 252 new members announced on April 22, and one of only five law professors who were chosen.

Alexis Sanborn
ONLINE | Law, Justice and Human Rights in China ...

This 10-session seminar will introduce the legal system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – in practice as well as theory – with an emphasis on institutions, norms, procedures, personnel and ideology relating to constitutional law, criminal justice and human rights. We will view the contemporary legal process against the background of China’s legal traditions and pre-Communist efforts to develop a modern legal system. We will also consider the relevant experiences of Chinese societies in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

USALI News, US-China Relations, Recent Events, NYU Law
Alexis Sanborn
Jerome A. Cohen receives an honorary degree ...

Pioneering scholar of Chinese law, Professor Jerome Alan Cohen has taught and mentored countless others in a field he helped establish in this country. A courageous voice for those whose voices have been silenced, Professor Cohen defends human rights around the globe. Bold trailblazer and advocate, for using his many talents to create a more just world, Yale is proud to present Professor Jerome Alan Cohen with his third Yale degree, Doctor of Laws.

China, US-China Relations
Guest User
“Was Helping China Build Its Post-1978 Legal ...

From USALI Faculty Director Emeritus  Jerome A. Cohen: “Here’s a draft of a new article that in a way is my Apologia Pro Vita Sua. There have been some debates about whether those of us who tried to help China build its legal system in the decade beginning in 1979 committed a mistake. I offer my thoughts in the article from a frank, close-up, first-hand perspective. I hope they will be useful for people thinking about our China policy and for anyone interested in recent Chinese history.”

“Was Helping China Build Its Post-1978 Legal System a Mistake?”
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Affiliated Scholar Bruce Aronson talks about Carlos Ghosn's attack against Japan's criminal justice system on Bloomberg TV

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Bruce Aronson, affiliated scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of New York University School of Law, talks about Carlos Ghosn's attack against Japan’s criminal justice system. “I was brutally taken from my world as I knew it,” the former head of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA said in Beirut. Aronson, who is an outside director of Japanese Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai Co. and has been tenured professor of law at universities in the U.S. and Japan, speaks on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Australia."

Further reading: The Diplomat: Is Nissan a Japanese Company? by Affiliated Scholar Bruce Aronson.

Original interview on Bloomberg.

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Event Recap: Exonerated! From Central Park to East Asia

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Event Recap: Exonerated! From Central Park to East Asia

Wrongful convictions occur in every jurisdiction, and legal professionals around the world should collaborate to redress and prevent them. That was the message of ‘Exonerated! From Central Park to East Asia,’ a speaker event held at the law school on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 by the U.S.-Asia Law Institute (USALI) and co-sponsored by the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law and Asia Law Society.

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Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges

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Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges

Taiwan’s experience with transitional justice over the past three decades suggests that dealing with historical injustice is a dynamic and fluid process that is fundamentally shaped and constrained by the balance of power and socio-political reality in a particular transitional society. This Article provides a contextualized legal-political analysis of the evolution of Taiwan’s transitional justice regime, with special attention to its limits and challenges.

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Osaka High Court clears grandmother in an SBS case

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USALI is pleased to report the recent developments from Innocence Project Japan and their work to overturn a shaken-baby-syndrome case. Below is an English summary taken from the Shaken Baby Review website, written by IPJ partner Kana Sasakura of Konan University.

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South China Morning Post: An independent inquiry is still the only way to end the protests and keep Hong Kong’s story from ending tragically

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South China Morning Post: An independent inquiry is still the only way to end the protests and keep Hong Kong’s story from ending tragically

Were Mark Twain with us, he might say about citizen action to save Hong Kong what he said about the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

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ASEAN and the South China Sea: Vietnam's Role as Chair

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ASEAN and the South China Sea: Vietnam's Role as Chair

On November 4, the ASEAN chair’s gavel was passed to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc of Vietnam at the closing ceremony of the grouping’s annual summit in Bangkok. Vietnam will serve as the chair of ASEAN, the most important international organization in Southeast Asia, through 2020.

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Announcing the Innocence Film Festival from Taiwan Innocence Project

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Announcing the Innocence Film Festival from Taiwan Innocence Project

To spread awareness of the problem of wrongful convictions, the Taiwan Innocence Project will be hosting its first “Innocence Film Festival” from December 11 through December 15, 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan, featuring 18 domestic and foreign documentary and fact-based dramas that depict miscarriages of justice in Taiwan, the United States, Japan, Iceland, the Philippines and other countries. See the trailer and poster below. More details will be made public soon.

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Judicial Activism in Taiwan

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USALI’s guest speakers from East Asia often inspire reflection on our own legal and judicial debates from new angles. At a special seminar at USALI on November 1, Chief Justice Tzong-Li Hsu and Justice Jau-Yuan Hwang of Taiwan’s Constitutional Court made a case for judicial activism, which has become a mostly pejorative term in the United States. Chief Justice Hsu argued that Taiwan’s Constitutional Court should “serve as mediator for opposing political forces in the process of transition.”

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China's Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime

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China's Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime

Human rights in China is an important research field that the USALI is actively engaged in. Dr. Yu-Jie Chen, our affiliate scholar and a Global Academic Fellow at Hong Kong University Faculty of Law, has just published an article on “China’s Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime” (NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, vol. 51, no. 4, 2019).

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Human Rights in the Chinese Administration of Justice

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Human Rights in the Chinese Administration of Justice

This paper, published by USALI Affiliated Scholar Yu-Jie Chen, is part of the annual report published by Taiwan’s Foundation for Democracy on human rights in China. It gives an overview of the recent trends, particularly in 2018, regarding human rights issues in the contexts of the Chinese police law enforcement, the National Supervisory Commission, the court and lawyers.

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Harvard Book Event: Taiwan and International Human Rights

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From Professor Jerome A. Cohen’s Blog:

I'm delighted to announce the publication of a new edited volume, Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation. I admire the hard work of my co-editors and dear friends, Professors Bill Alford of Harvard and LO Chang-fa, former Taiwan Constitutional Court Justice and National Taiwan University Law Dean, that made this book possible.

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Student Scholars Program Accepting Applications for 2019 - 2020 Year

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Student Scholars Program Accepting Applications for 2019 - 2020 Year

The U.S-Asia Law Institute (USALI) is currently accepting applications for its annual Student Scholars program, an exciting year-long opportunity to produce independent research related to the Institute’s ongoing projects.

The selection process is competitive, and successful student scholars will meet regularly as a group to discuss important legal issues facing the region, meet with the Institute’s world-renowned visiting scholars and receive guidance and support from USALI staff.  Students are expected to commit time to the Institute each week and contribute to the work of the Institute.

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Implications of the Hong Kong Extradition Bill with Affiliated Scholar Alvin Cheung

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Implications of the Hong Kong Extradition Bill with Affiliated Scholar Alvin Cheung

Hong Kong has been in the news over the controversy and protests surrounding the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill proposed by the Hong Kong government. Our very own Alvin Cheung has been analyzing the situation across a number of platforms.

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China Law & Policy Podcast: Frank Upham - Our Man in Wuhan

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On May 29, 2019 Elizabeth Lynch interviewed NYU Law Professor Frank Upham in observance of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. The interview details how in 1989 Professor Upham was a researcher at Wuhan University faculty of law and as a result witnessed the pro-democracy protests that were also occurring in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei Province. Listen / Read Transcript of the Podcast here.

USALI Welcomes Summer 2019 Interns

This week USALI is delighted to welcome our interns for the summer! This internship provides an excellent opportunity for practical and hands-on legal research experience, close mentorship and career advice, the opportunity to development independent research with guidance from USALI staff, and a connection with a community of legal scholars, academics, and professionals committed to understanding the Rule of Law in Asia.