“Is There Law in China?
Is There Justice?” to be
Addressed at UCSD March 4 by Top
U.S. Authority on Chinese Legal System

February 26, 2008

By Barry Jagoda

Jerome Cohen, a professor at the New York University School of Law and America’s leading expert on Chinese law, will speak on “Is There Law in China? Is There Justice?” The event, March 4 at the UC San Diego School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), is free and open to the public.

Professor Cohen’s talk, beginning at 7 p. m., will be presented by the Center on Pacific Economies at IR/PS and the annual Higgs Memorial Lecture, which is jointly sponsored by Warren College at UC San Diego and the California Western School of Law.   The event will take place in the Robinson Auditorium on the UCSD campus.

Cohen will be in residence at the Center on Pacific Economies at IR/PS for the month of March as a Pacific Leadership Fellow. He has been an adjunct senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations since 1995. Since 1990, he has been a professor at the New York University School of Law. Cohen formerly served as Jeremiah J. Smith professor, director of East Asian legal studies, and associate dean at Harvard Law School. Cohen lived in Beijing during 1979–81. He formerly served as adviser to the Government of Sichuan Province, China; as chairman of the American Arbitration Association’s China Conciliation Committee and to the New York/Beijing Friendship (Sister City) Committee; as trustee to both the China Institute in America and the Asia Society; and as a member of the board of editors of both the China Quarterly and the American Journal of International Law. He continues to serve on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch – Asia and is a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Warren College Provost Steven Adler will welcome guests, and Dr. Susan Shirk, director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, will introduce the speaker. Dr. Yingjin Zhang, director of the Chinese Studies Program at UC San Diego, will moderate a panel discussion following the lecture with Professor Cohen and Dr. Shirk, as well as Dr. Richard Madsen, chair of the Department of Sociology at UC San Diego and Professor James Cooper of the California Western School of Law.

For more information, including specific directions and parking, contact Gretchen Harris, Warren College program coordinator, 858-534-1704 or gharris@ucsd.edu or Lesley Pettigrew, CPE communications coordinator, 858-822-6756 or lpettigrew@ucsd.edu.

Media Contact: Barry Jagoda, 858-534-8567