Nicholas Calcina Howson is a professor of law who earned his BA from Williams College and his JD from Columbia Law School. Professor Howson has spent many years living in the People's Republic of China, both as a scholar—working at Shanghai's Fudan University (1983 to 1985), Beijing University, China People's University and the Chinese University of Politics and Law (1988), and Shanghai's East China University of Politics and Law (2008)—and as a practicing lawyer based in Beijing (1992 to 1994 and 1996 to 2003). A former partner at the New York-based international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, he worked out of that firm's New York, Paris, London, and Beijing offices, finally as a managing partner of the firm's Asia Practice based in the Chinese capital. During this time, he acted for clients in precedent-setting transactions, including the first Securities and Exchange Commission-registered IPO and New York Stock Exchange listing by a PRC-domiciled issuer (Shandong Huaneng Power Development, 1994), and the first private placement of shares to foreign interests in a newly privatized PRC joint stock company and subsequent IPOs on the domestic Chinese capital markets (the Soros purchase of a 25 percent stake in Hainan Airlines and subsequent B- and A-share offerings, 1995 to 1996). In addition to Michigan Law, he also has visited and taught at the Berkeley (Boalt), Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard law schools. Professor Howson writes and lectures widely on Chinese law topics, focusing on Chinese corporate law and securities regulation, the Chinese capital markets, Chinese legal history, and the development of constitutionalism in Greater China. Professor Howson has been a consultant to the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, the Asian Development Bank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and various PRC government ministries and administrative departments in connection with the drafting of PRC statutes and regulations. He acts regularly as a Chinese law expert or party advocate in U.S. and international litigations and/or U.S. government enforcement actions. Professor Howson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, and a designated foreign arbitrator for both the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission in Beijing and the Shanghai International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission. He is a former chair of the Asian Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar Association.