Howson, Nicholas C.

Professor of Law

3234 South Hall
734.615.2892
E-mail nhowson@umich.edu

Nicholas Calcina Howson is a professor of law and a former partner of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP who worked out of the 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. He 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 (PRC), both as a scholar and as a practicing lawyer based in Beijing. 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 the Chinese legislature and various PRC government ministries and administrative departments in connection with the drafting of PRC statutes and regulations. He acts as a Chinese law expert or party advocate in U.S. and international litigations and/or U.S. government enforcement actions. In addition to Michigan Law, he also has visited and taught at the Berkeley (Boalt), Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard law schools. 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.

Recent Publications

More Publications...

Twenty-Five Years On -- The Establishment and Application of Corporate Fiduciary Duties in PRC Law. Univ. of Michigan Law & Economics Research Paper Series, no. 17-024. Working Paper.
Full Text: MLaw Repository | SSRN

Amending China's Insider Trading Prohibition - An Immodest Proposal. Univ. of Michigan Law & Economics Research Paper Series, no. 15-016. Working Paper.
Full Text: MLaw Repository | SSRN

Co-author. "通往小股东保障之路径：中国派生诉讼" [Pathway to Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions in the People's Republic of China]. In 外国学者论中国法丛书——公司法分卷 [Foreign Scholars on Chinese Law - Company Law]. Beijing: 中国大百科全书出版社 [China Encyclopedia Publishing House], Forthcoming, 2018. (Chinese translation of "Pathway to Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions in the People's Republic of China." D. C. Clarke, co-author. In The Derivative Action in Asia: A Comparative and Functional Approach, edited by D. Puchniak, H. Baum, and M. Ewing-Chow, 243-95. International Corporate Law and Financial Market Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012.)
Full Text: SSRN

"China's 'Corporatization without Privatization' and the Late 19th Century Roots of a Stubborn Path Dependency." Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 50, no. 4 (2017): 961-1006.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

Translator and annotator. "Improving the Civil Liability System for False and Misleading Disclosure in the Chinese Security Markets." Liming Wang, author. In Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law - China and the World, edited by N. C. Howson and H. Huang, 103-22. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017.

Co-author. "Preface" and "Conclusion - Between 'Law in Books' and 'Law in Action'." H. Huang, co-author. In Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law - China and the World, edited by N. C. Howson and H. Huang. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017.

Co-editor. Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law: China and the World. R. H. Huang, co-editor. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017.
MLaw Catalog

"A Partial View of China's Governance Trajectory." Review of China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay, by M. Pei. Asia Pol'y 23 (2017): 162-66.
Full Text: WWW

"Protecting the State from Itself? Regulatory Interventions in Corporate Governance and the Financing of China's 'State Capitalism'." In Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism, edited by B. Liebman and C. Milhaupt, 49-69. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016.
Full Text: MLaw Repository | SSRN

"像钱锺书一样的知识分子" ["Remembering Lu Gusun - A Chinese Intellectual Like Quian Zhongshu."] Shanghai Rev. of Books, September 4, 2016.
Full Text: WWW

Review of Securities and Capital Markets Law in China, by R. H. Huang. J. Int'l Banking L. & Reg. 30, no. 9 (2015): 521-2.
Full Text: Westlaw

Co-author. "Reverse Cross-listings - The Coming Race to List in Emerging Markets and an Enhanced Understanding of Classical Bonding." V.S. Khanna, co-author. Corp. Prac. Commentator 57, no. 3 (2015): 703-29. (Originally published under the same title in Cornell Int'l L. J. 47, no. 3 (2014): 607-29.)

"Return of the Prodigal Form? - Partnerships and Partnership Law in the People's Republic of China." In Research Handbook on Partnerships, LLCs and Alternative Forms of Business Organizations, edited by R. W. Hillman and M. J. Loewenstein, 390-411. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015.
Full Text: Elgar Online (UMich users) | Elgar Online | SSRN

Recently Taught Courses

Curriculum Interest Areas

Activities

Coauthored amicus brief in support of petitioners in Animal Science Products, Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., March 2018.

Presented the chapter, "Twenty-Five Years On—The Establishment and Application of Corporate Fiduciary Duties in PRC Law," at the Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law's "Fiduciary Law: Charting the Field" conference, Harvard Law School, November 2017.

Presented the final report, "Amendment of the 2006 PRC Securities Law—A Securities Registration System and Reform of the Insider Trading Prohibition," to the PRC National People's Congress Standing Committee's Legal Affairs Commission and Asian Development Bank closed meeting on amendment of the PRC Securities Law, Beijing, China, November 2017.

Appointed associate director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, August 2017.

Participated in the PRC National People's Congress Legal Affairs Commission and Asian Development Bank closed workshop on amendment of the PRC Securities Law, Beijing, China, April 2017.

Presented the paper, "Revising China's Securities Law—On Amending The Insider Trading Prohibition," at the Queen Mary University London, Tsinghua University, and China People's University co-organized 4th China-UK Annual Conference on Commercial Law and Economics, "Rule of Law in the Chinese Capital Markets," Beijing, China, April 2017.

Presented the paper, "After the Fall(s)—Rewriting China's Securities Law and Regulation of the PRC Capital Markets," at the University of British Columbia Peter A. Allard School of Law, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 2017.

Presented the paper, "China's 'Corporatization without Privatization' and the Late 19th Century Roots of a Stubborn Path Dependency," at the Sovereign Conduct on the Margins of the Law symposium, Vanderbilt Law School, Nashville, February 2017.

Presented the paper "Revising the PRC Securities Law—A Proposal for Amendment of China's Insider Trading Prohibition" at the Zhejiang University Guanghua School of Law High Level Forum on Rule of Law and Reform, "Private Law and Economic Development Under Rule of Law," Hangzhou, China, November 2016.

Moderated the Industry Panel, U-M Department of Economics and Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies conference on "Industrial Upgrading and Economic Growth in China," University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Ann Arbor, October 2016.

Presented "China's People's Courts and Corporatized State-owned Enterprises—Indications (or Not) of Technical Competence, Bureaucratic Autonomy, and Political Independence" at the New York University Law School, New York, October 2016.

Presented "Non-U.S. Acquisitions of U.S. Companies and Assets—U.S. Securities Law Aspects and Implications" (in English and Chinese) at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business China Development Bank Executive Education Program, "Industrial Upgrading and Financial Innovation," Ann Arbor, June 2016.

Taught the course The Chinese Corporation at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law, Mount-Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel, May 2016.

Presented "Partnership Formations and the People's Courts—Law, Development, and Judicial Autonomy" at the University of Toronto Law Faculty's Third Annual China Law Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 2016.

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