Asia Law Talks

During the 2008-09 academic year, the Pacific-Asian Legal Studies Program continued our popular Asia Law Talks series, bringing distinguished experts to meet with students and faculty in informal discussions.  Talks are usually presented over lunch and are followed by by questions and lively discussions of the important issues our speakers have raised.  This past year, our speakers have included:

	November 2, 2009. Professor Yasuhei Taniguchi of Senshu University Law School presented a talk “Dispute Resolution and the WTO: Reflections of a Former Judge” to a full audience of students, faculty and visiting scholars on Monday. He discussed the many difficulties faced by WTO members in negotiations, communicating in English as a second language, and enforcement of WTO rulings.
	March 17, 2009. Professor Mark Galanter, India’s Justice Deficit. Professor Galanter is the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin and LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a distinguished scholar of the legal system in the U.S. as well as of India, and he is recognized as the leading American scholar of the Indian legal system. He is the author of Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India and Law and Society in Modern India. He serves as an honorary professor of the National Law School of India and is currently engaged in research on access to justice in India. Professor Galanter is also a leading figure in the empirical study of legal systems and the author of many highly regarded and seminal studies on patterns of litigation in the U.S. Flier.
	March  16, 2009  Manuel C. Menendez III, China: Beijing Olympics 2008 and Global Financial Crisis 2009.  Mr. Menendez is chairman and CEO of MCM Group Holdings Ltd and 8M8 LLC, which specialize in business development and consulting, international trade, strategic marketing and planning, and mergers-acquisitions.  He has been involved with China and the Asia-Pacific Region for thirty years as a businessman and entrepreneur and has also been active in humanitarian efforts in that region.  In Hawaiʻi, Mr. Menendez served as executive director of the Office of Economic Development and the Office of Waikiki Development, and director of the Sports Tourism Office, City and County of Honolulu. Flier.
	January 28, 2009 Laurence J. Brahm ‘87, Trash the Textbook: The Reality of Doing Business in Asia and China. Mr. Brahm, a 1987 graduate of the WSRSL, is a global activist, international crisis mediator, lawyer and political economist. He has practiced law in Hong Kong, mainland China and Southeast Asia, served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank and as managing director of the consulting firm, Naga Group Ltd. He is the developer of boutique hotels and dining clubs in Beijing, and in 2005 he founded the Shambhala Foundation. He is the author of many books and writes a column for the South China Morning Post.
	January 20, 2009 Professor Donald L. Horowitz, An Inside Job: How Indonesia Produced a Democratic Constitution. Professor Horowitz is the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University. He is the author of six books, including Ethnic Groups in Conflict, A Democratic South Africa? and The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Professor Horowitz is currently writing a book about constitutional design, particularly for divided societies, a subject on which he has advised in a number of countries. He is currently president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosphy and is a member of the Secretary of State’s bipartisan Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.
	November 3, 2008  Ko-Yung Tung, Esq., Foreign Investments and Investment Disputes. Mr. Tung is a distinguished international lawyer who has practiced in both the public and private sector.  He served for many years as the head of O’Melveny and Myers’ international practice group and is now senior cousellor at Morrison & Foerster in New York, where his clients include Japan Airlines, Goldman Sachs and the Kajima Group.  From 1999 to 2003 he served as vice president and general counsel of the World Bank, where he played a key role in programs promoting good governance and the rule of law.  He has taught at NYU and now teaches a course on international law and development at Yale.
	September 3, 2008  Professor Gary Bell, Clean Elections Run by Corrupt Officials: Lessons on Democracy from Indonesia.  Professor Bell is associate professor of law at the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore, where he teaches courses on comparative law, Indonesian law and international and comparative sales law. He earned degrees in both common law and civil law at McGill University in Montreal and an LL.M. from Columbia University.  Professor Bell is the author of many articles on Indonesian law, including its regional autonomy law, regionalism and minority rights, and the Indonesian constitution.  He is the founder and director of ASLI, the Asian Law Institute, which is based at the National University of Singapore and includes major Asian law schools.