China and Chinese Legal Studies at the University of Michigan Law School
The University of Michigan Law School has perhaps the richest history of any U.S. Law School in interactions with China: in the early 1900s China's top legal academics, judges, lawyers and constitutionalists traveled to Ann Arbor to deepen their understanding of the Anglo American legal tradition, and take back to post-Revolution China new institutions of governance and development. In the 100 years between 1859 and 1959, more of Michigan Law School’s foreign students came from China than any other country in the world. One of the best known was John C.H. Wu (Wu Jingxiong) -- principal drafter of China's 1946 Constitution and the Chinese side of a famed correspondence with Oliver Wendell Holmes -- who came to Michigan Law School as part of the exchange with Soochow Dongwu Comparative Law School. Established in 1915, Dongwu developed and grew to prominence under the leadership of Michigan Law School Professor William Wirt Blume. In the three decades that followed, Michigan Law School stood as the primary destination of the best Chinese law graduates pursuing further legal study and research in the outside world.
Chinese Law Curriculum and Teaching
Professor Howson (right) interviewing Shanghai judges with Professor Luo Peixin, Shanghai, June 2007.
Today’s Michigan Law, working closely with the University of Michigan’s world-renowned Center for Chinese Studies, is a worthy successor to the Michigan Law-China tradition of the early 20th century. Assistant Professor and University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies Executive Committee member Nicholas C. Howson, a longtime partner (and head of the China offices) at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and specialist in contemporary Chinese law, teaches courses in modern Chinese law and legal institutions, China’s modern corporate, securities and investment law, and Chinese legal history. Professor Howson is co-chair of the University-wide 2007-8 China "Theme Year" Committee. Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah, an expert in international taxation and key actor in the Law School’s China law related exchanges, convenes a well-attended workshop on China, the WTO, and globalization. Future seminars in Chinese legal studies will include courses focusing on Chinese corporate and securities law and the capital markets, constitutionalism in post-1949 China and Taiwan, Hong Kong in the PRC constitutional framework, and China and human rights.
Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah, an expert in international taxation, presents at the First International Tax Conference.
Chinese Legal Scholars at the Law School
China-related courses at the Law School are complemented by the presence in the J.D. and L.L.M. student ranks of PRC and Taiwanese-origin scholars, and U.S., Canadian, and European non-native (but fluent) speakers and writers of Chinese. The dynamic student-run Asia Law Society convenes a regular speaker series on China law topics, and organizes a large symposium each year on a compelling Chinese law topic. In 2006, the Law School and the Center for Chinese Studies won approval by the University of Michigan for an innovative and highly competitive joint J.D./M.A. in Law and Chinese Studies, allowing selected students to take advantage of the Law School’s rich offerings in Chinese law and the greater university’s even deeper roster of courses in China-related political science, economics, business, sociology, history, etc. The Michigan Law Library and the University of Michigan’s Asian Library combine to provide one of the most extensive multi-language collections of Chinese legal materials in North America or Europe.
A delegation headed by East China University of Politics and Law President He Qinhua visits the Law School in May of 2007.
Each year, the Law School community is enriched by the presence of the Chinese world’s most renowned legal scholars who, like their colleagues in the 1920s and 30s, travel to Michigan Law for research, study, and interaction with Michigan students and faculty. Faculty and research scholar level exchanges increased after the Ford Foundation-supported establishment of the Committee on Legal Education Exchange with China (CLEEC) in the early 1980s, a project led by (now Emeritus) Professor Whit Gray in conjunction with faculty from Berkeley, Columbia, Georgetown, and Harvard. In the past almost three decades, a large number of top Chinese scholars have worked at Michigan. Very recent long-term scholars in residence at Michigan include: Professor Zhu Ciyun of the Tsinghua Law School, one of China’s foremost experts in the PRC’s developing company law (and a principal drafter of the 2005 Company Law of the PRC); Professor Li Xiuqing of the East China University of Politics and Law, a top Chinese legal historian and Editor-in-Chief of the East China University of Politics and Law Journal; and Professor Sheng-lin Jan, Vice Dean of the National Taiwan University Law School.
Professor Howson with Tsinghua Law School Professor Zhu Ciyun at the Supreme People's Court in Beijing.
Exchanges with China
The Law School encourages exchanges directed in the opposite direction – with our faculty and students visiting China for research, conferences, or course work. In a direct echo of the Soochow Dongwu Comparative Law School tradition (and the work of Michigan Law Professor William Blume), each summer several faculty members from the Law School visit the premises of the Tsinghua University School of Law to teach short courses in international and American law to students from Tsinghua and Peking University. Participants in this exchange have included Professors Avi-Yonah, Howson, Vic Khanna, and Associate Dean Kyle Logue. In the Spring of 2005, Professor Avi-Yonah organized a joint symposium with Tsinghua University Law School on "New Developments in Sino-American Commercial Law," at which seven University of Michigan Law School professors were featured. In 2006 and 2007, the Law School co-sponsored tax conferences with Peking University (on transfer pricing and tax administration) attended by several current Law faculty and former faculty including Judge David Laro of US Tax Court, former Law School Dean (and Cornell University President) Jeff Lehman, Associate Dean Logue and Professor Avi-Yonah) as well as many senior Chinese tax officials and academics. Law School Dean Emeritus Theodore St. Antoine is a frequent visitor to China, leading a long-term project in labor contract arbitration with the Michigan political science department and the East China University of Politics and Law. The next Michigan-Beida tax conference is scheduled to be in Ann Arbor in fall 2008. The Law School will also consider student exchanges with universities in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong but these are approved on a student/program-specific basis to ensure that Michigan Law students receive comparable training (and in Chinese) as they would on the Ann Arbor campus.
Michigan Law Alumni and Scholars in China
Li Dan, '06, Associate, Troutman, Sanders LLP, Shanghai.
Michigan Law alumni who have returned to China from Ann Arbor constitute a growing list of China’s most influential legal reformers, practitioners, and key friends of the Law School. These outstanding and loyal Michigan Law School alumni include: Professor Wang Liming, China’s foremost civil law expert, drafter of the 1996 unified Contract Law of the PRC and the (as of yet unpromulgated) Civil Code of China and Dean of the People’s University (Renda) Law School; Grand Justice Wan E’Xiang, Executive Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court; and Professor Zeng Lingliang, Dean of the Wuhan University School of Law. Literally hundreds of Michigan Law graduates populate China’s best law firms and corporate in-house counsel jobs.
Michigan Law School and China
Today’s Michigan Law continues and enhances the distinguished history of cooperation and exchange with China dating back to the early 1900s. The Law School remains a major center for the study of Chinese law and legal institutions in the United States, and a place where Chinese scholars, practitioners, and legislative drafters encounter the American, European, and Japanese legal traditions as China crafts its own modern legal system.