Faculty, Fellows, Visiting Scholars & Staff
The U.S.-Asia Law Institute is made up of full-time professors, scholars and staff, and each year welcomes a number of visiting professors and scholars of Asian legal studies.
U.S.-Asia Law Institute Faculty, Fellows, and Staff
Prof. Jerome A. Cohen
Co-Director
Prof. Jerome A. Cohen, a professor at NYU School of Law since 1990 and co-director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, is a leading American expert on Asian law. A pioneer in the field, Prof. Cohen began studying Chinese criminal law in the early 1960s and from 1964 to 1979 introduced the teaching of Asian law into the curriculum of Harvard Law School, where he served as Jeremiah Smith Professor and Associate Dean. In addition to his responsibilities at NYU, Prof. Cohen served for several years as C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he currently is an Adjunct Senior Fellow. He retired from the partnership of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP at the end of 2000. In his law practice, Prof. Cohen represented many companies and individuals in contract negotiations as well as in dispute resolution in various Asian countries. He also continues to serve as an arbitrator in many Asian legal disputes.
Prof. Cohen has published several books on Chinese law, including The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China, 1949-63, People's China and International Law and Contract Laws of the People's Republic of China. In addition, he has published numerous articles on various topics as well as a book, China Today, co-authored with his wife, Joan Lebold Cohen. In 1990, he published Investment Law and Practice in Vietnam. Today, Prof. Cohen continues his research and writing on Asian law, specifically focusing on criminal justice reform, dispute resolution, human rights and the role of international law.
Outside academia, Prof. Cohen has served in government, first as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. from 1958 to 1959 and then as a consultant to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1959. He has also testified at many congressional hearings on China.
Prof. Cohen is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale College (B.A. 1951). He spent the academic year 1951-1952 as a Fulbright Scholar in France and graduated, in 1955, from Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. He was Law Secretary to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court in the 1955 Term and Law Secretary to Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court in the 1956 Term.
Prof. Frank Upham
Co-Director
Prof. Frank Upham is the Wilf Family Professor of Property Law at NYU School of Law. In addition to property law, Prof. Upham offers courses on law and development with an emphasis on Asia. He currently serves as co-director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute.
Prof. Upham has spent considerable time at various institutions in Asia, including as a Japan Foundation Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Doshisha University in 1977, as a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Sophia University in 1986, and as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2003. His scholarship has focused on Japan, and he published in 2006 a Japanese language essay on the "stealth activism" of the Japanese judiciary. His book Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan received from Harvard University Press the Thomas J. Wilson Prize in 1987. More recently he has begun researching and writing about Chinese law and society and law and development generally. His 2005 Yale Law Journal essay, "Who Will Find the Defendant if He Stays with his Sheep? Justice in Rural China," helped introduce contemporary Chinese sociolegal scholarship to an English-speaking audience for the first time.
Prof. Upham graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1967 and Harvard Law School in 1974. From 1967 to 1970, Prof. Upham taught in the Department of Western Languages at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, and was a journalist in Southeast Asia. After law school he worked as a litigator in the Office of the Attorney General in Massachusetts. Before moving to NYU in 1994, he taught at Ohio State, Harvard, and Boston College law schools.
Dr. Ping Yu
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Ping Yu is a senior research fellow at the U.S-Asia Law Institute and a leading specialist on China's criminal procedure. Dr. Yu is also an adjunct professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Law in Shanghai where he teaches both a course on Chinese criminal law and a comparative course on criminal justice in the United States. Dr. Yu joined NYU School of Law in 2000. Prior to joining NYU, from 1998-2000, Dr. Yu was a senior fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York, where he analyzed the impact of China's 1996-1997 criminal justice reforms on defendant's rights. Currently, Dr. Yu's research focuses on reforms to China's death penalty review procedures and a comparative analysis of death penalty trials and appeals in the U.S. and China.
Dr. Yu is a 1985 graduate of East China Institute of Politics and Law in Shanghai, where he received his LL.B. in Law. In 1987, he was awarded a Graduate Diploma in Law from Fudan University in Shanghai. He continued his studies at the University of Washington School or Law where he received his LL.M in 1994 and a Ph.D in Asian and Comparative Law in 2006.
Elizabeth M. Lynch
Research Fellow
Elizabeth M. Lynch is a research fellow at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of NYU School of Law. Prior to joining NYU in July 2007, Elizabeth was an associate in the litigation department of Morrison & Foerster's New York Office. As an associate, her practice focused on U.S. securities litigation and anti-trust actions. Ms. Lynch also worked on many pro bono cases, including a state post-conviction petition for an individual on Tennessee's death row. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2003 and her B.A. in Chinese Studies and Political Science from the State University of New York at Albany in 1999. From 1999-2000, Elizabeth was a Fulbright Scholar researching rule of law issues at Peking University in Beijing.
Margaret K. Lewis
NYU Furman Fellow
Maggie Lewis, a Furman Fellow at NYU School of Law, focuses on criminal justice issues in China. Prior to joining NYU in September 2005 as a research fellow at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, Ms. Lewis served as a law clerk for Judge M. Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She received her J.D. from NYU School of Law in 2003. While studying at NYU, she spent a semester at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. Following graduation, she worked at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City. Ms. Lewis received her B.A. from Columbia University and also studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China.
Darius Longarino
Administrator
Darius Longarino is a Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of New York University (BA, 2005) where he majored in history and completed his thesis "Invisible Roads: The Silk Roads in the Political Imagination of the 20th Century." Before joining the U.S.-Asia Law Institute in early 2007, he spent a year and a half teaching English and history at Shihezi University in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. While in Shihezi, Mr. Longarino continued his study of Mandarin and trained to become Shihezi University's 2006 Xiangsheng ("Crosstalk") champion.
U.S.-Asia Law Institute Visiting Professors and Scholars
Each year the U.S.-Asia Law Institute and NYU School of Law host a variety of experts in the field of Asian legal studies. Below is a list of visiting professors and scholars for the 2007-2008 academic year.
Prof. Donald C. Clarke
NYU Visiting Professor
Professor, George Washington University Law School
Prof. Donald C. Clarke is a professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in Chinese law. During the 2007-2008 academic year, he is a visiting professor at the NYU School of Law. Prof. Clarke's experience includes practicing law in China and the U.S. with a major international law firm, and his current research focuses on such areas as Chinese legal institutions, the legal issues presented by China's economic reforms, and corporate governance, on which he presented a talk at NYU's China House in November 2007. Prof. Clarke has published extensively in journals such as the China Quarterly and the American Journal of Comparative Law. Most recently, he served as the special editor of the September 2007 issue of the China Quarterly, which was devoted entirely to the Chinese legal system.
In addition to his academic work, Prof. Clarke founded and maintains Chinalaw, the leading internet listserv on Chinese law, and writes the Chinese Law Prof Blog.
Prof. Clarke received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1977. After spending time in China, he received his M.Sc. from the University of London in 1983, followed by his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Group to the US-China Working Group of the United States Congress and of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Taiyun Huang
Criminal Law Scholar
Deputy Director, Department of Criminal Legislation, Legal Affairs Commission, National People's Congress Standing Committee
Mr. Taiyun Huang has worked in the Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) of the National People's Congress (NPC) for more than 21 years. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Department of Criminal Legislation of the LAC. Mr. Huang is the Institute's first Criminal Law Scholar and is in residence at NYU School of Law for the 2008 spring semester.
As Deputy Director, Mr. Huang has been involved in the drafting and revision of many laws related to criminal matters including the Criminal Law, the Criminal Procedure Law, the Prison Law, the Police Law, the Judges' Law, and the Prosecutors' Law. Mr. Huang's role also requires him to assist in answering legal questions posed by courts and law enforcement agencies, including the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Justice.
Mr. Huang graduated from Peking University in 1982 with a degree in history and received his law degree from the Law School of the China University of Political Science and Law in 1986. From 1991 to 1992, Mr. Huang was a visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham on a Sino-British Friendship Scholarship. During this time, he researched the criminal justice system of England and Wales. Mr. Huang also served as a visiting researcher at Yale Law School's China Law Center during 2000.
Dean Yixin Liao
NYU Senior Global Research Fellow
Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar
Dean, Law School of Xiamen University
Dean Yixin Liao first began teaching at the Law School of Xiamen University in 1985. Currently, he serves as the Dean of the Law School while teaching courses on international law. Dean Liao is in residence at NYU School of Law for the 2007-2008 academic year.
Dean Liao's research focuses on international economic law and international tax law and he has published many influential textbooks and articles in the field of international tax law. While at NYU, Dean Liao is conducting a comparative study of the corporate income tax laws of the United States and China.
Dean Liao's experience is not limited solely to the academic sphere. Since 1985, he has worked part-time as an attorney at the United Xingshi Law Firm in Xiamen and, since 1997, he has served as an arbitrator of both the China International Economic & Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and the Xiamen Arbitration Commission. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Committee on National Legal Education of the Ministry of Education and vice-president of the Society of Finance and Tax Law.
Dean Liao received his Master of Law degree in international law from Xiamen University in 1984. From 1993-1994, Dean Liao was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and in February 2002, a senior visiting scholar at the Faculty of Law of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
Dean Chenguang Wang
NYU Global Visiting Professor
Dean, Tsinghua University Law School
Dean Chenguang Wang has been a Professor of Law at Tsinghua University since 2000 and Dean of Tsinghua Law School since 2002. He currently teaches Legal Theory, Legislative and Judicial Theory and Practice, Legal Clinic and Comparative Law at Tsinghua University Law School. Dean Wang is a Global Visiting Professor at NYU School of Law during the 2008 spring semester.
Dean Wang's research interests are in the field of jurisprudence, sociology of law, comparative law and judicial practice. He has published articles on legal reasoning, constitutional law, judicial reform and legal education. He has also co-authored several books including The Chinese Legal System, New Trends in Comparative Law, and Twenty Years of Reform and Development of The People's Congress.
Before joining the faculty of Tsinghua University, from 1985 to 1994, Dean Wang was a lecturer, associate professor and then Vice Dean at Peking University Law School. From 1994 to 1999, Dean Wang was an associate professor at Hong Kong City University Law School. Dean Wang has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Florida Law School in 1991, as a Fulbright Scholar and Honorable Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1993 to 1994, and as a visiting professor at the Academic Council of the Garrigues Chair on Global Law, Universidad de Navarra in 2007.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Dean Wang has served on various legal commissions and organizations. Since 1993, Dean Wang has served as an arbitrator on the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission and, since 2003, has been a special adviser to the Supreme People's Court. He was the Deputy Chairman of the China Association of Comparative Law (2003-2006), Deputy Chairman of the China Association of Legal Theory (2003-present), Deputy Chairman of the China Association of Legal Education (2007-present), a Visiting Professor at the National Judges' College, and a Visiting Professor at the National Prosecutors' College.
Dean Wang received a B.A., Masters of Law and a Ph.D. in Law from Peking University in 1980, 1983 and 1999, respectively. He also received an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School in 1986.