Asian Law Center

Dean Mohammad Gran and Prof. Lutforahman Saeed of the Shari’a Faculty of Kabul University visited the University of Washington School of Law for two weeks in April 2009 under the auspices of the Afghan Legal Educators Project. They met with faculty members from the Law School and other UW departments and attended courses. They also met with faculty in the UWLS clinical law program about the possibility of establishing clinical law programs in Kabul. Dean Gran delivered an address to approximately 70 people at the University of Puget Sound on Islamic Law and Women's Rights in Afghanistan, co-sponsored by the UPS departments of Religion; Spirituality, Service and Social Justice; Politics and Government; and Gender Studies. Prof. Saeed addressed students in Prof. Clark Lombardi’s Contemporary Islamic Legal Systems class on the topic of Customary Law in Afghanistan. They also visited Federal Court in Seattle where they observed a pro se litigant trial and traveled to Olympia where they met with legislators and observed legislative proceedings.

In April 2009 the Afghan Legal Educators Program brought to the U.S. a cohort comprised solely of female legal professionals from Afghanistan for a two week study tour at the University of Washington School of Law followed by several days in Washington, DC.

In Seattle they attended several short courses taught by UWLS faculty in a variety of subjects, visited local and federal courts, and observed tribal court and met with tribal court officials (coordinated by the Law School’s Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic). They spent two days in Olympia observing legislative sessions and meeting the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Supreme Court justices, legislators and other state officials. The cohort also had many opportunities for informal interaction with UW faculty, staff and students as well as members of the community and local bar, including a reception hosted by Fenwick & West LLP.

In Washington, DC the women toured the Capitol, the Supreme Court and enjoyed a private meeting with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They attended a tea hosted by Said T. Jawad, the Ambassador of Afghanistan and met with several officials at the Library of Congress on the topic of publicly accessible web-based research resources.

On February 19, 2009, Prof. Jon Eddy and eight visiting Afghan legal educators discussed legal education in Afghanistan, focusing on legal education in the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Shari’a, on their relationship with other legal institutions, and on legal careers in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Legal Educators Program at the University of Washington School of Law provides opportunities for advanced training to Afghan legal educators and works to support Afghan legal education in a variety of ways, building relationships between Afghan law and Shari’a (Islamic law) faculties and their counterparts in America and throughout the world. The Program hosted eight participants in 2008-09 including faculty from Balkh, Herat, Kabul and Al-Biruni universities.

In 2006, Professors Wali Mohammad Naseh, Humayoun Rahimi, Menhajuddin Hamed and Mohammad Haroon Mutasem left their homes, jobs, and families in Afghanistan to come to the UW School of Law to participate in the Afghan Legal Educators Program. They attended classes and social functions, wrote papers, studied for exams, and missed family and friends back home. In January 2008, they were rewarded for their sacrifice and became the first group of Afghan scholars and legal educators to complete the program. In their honor, friends and colleagues gathered to celebrate with a dinner and ceremony recognizing their accomplishments.

Professors Naseh, Hamed and Mutasem earned LL.M. degrees in 2008. Haroon, the youngest of the scholars, has returned to the law faculty at Kabul University, is a judicial training materials specialist, and is teaching at the recently opened American University of Afghanistan. Naseh too is back teaching law at Kabul University and is also a legal advisor for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Commerce. Hamed has returned to his post on the Shari’a faculty at Balkh University.

For Hamed particularly, the journey to the United States was a tremendous leap of faith. His family warned him that he would be lonely and have no friends. Hamed said he was happy to go home and tell them they were wrong. “I have made so many friends here in Seattle, at the university, and in law school,” he said. “I will always remember their kindness and hospitality.”

Throughout 2007, Afghan Legal Educators Program participants continued legal studies and participated in legal conferences around the US, including at Harvard, University of South Carolina and Washington & Lee University. They also participated in a State Department forum in Washington, D.C. to discuss the challenges of integrating Shari’a, customary and secular law. Several scholars also attended the 2008 AALS conference in New York where they shared ideas with colleagues from around the US and the world and collected textbooks to rebuild law libraries at their home institutions.

Our collaboration with the Law School’s Native American Center and the Tribal Court Criminal Defense Clinic provides a unique opportunity for a dialogue between Native American tribal justice leaders and the Afghan legal community about analogous challenges faced by the Afghan legal system and the tribal legal systems in the U.S. Working together with Professor Ron Whitener, Director of Tribal Court Criminal Defense Clinic and Molly Cohan, Clinic Supervisor, we are optimistic that Native American tribal justice systems can be innovative models to accommodate tribal customs within a larger democratic system in Afghanistan.

Participants on the Afghan Legal Educators Program have been introduced first hand to several tribal models. They visited the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in La Conner, WA, where they attended Tribal Court and met with Chief Judge M. Pouley and several tribal attorneys and members of the Swinomish Senate. A visit to the Tulalip Tribes headquarters in Marysville, WA , provided participants training on the Tulalip justice system and culture and provided examples of how the Tulalip Tribes have dealt with the challenge of maintaining traditional tribal law values in a modern court system.

In April 2007, Professors Hakimi and Mutasem joined Tribal Clinic law students at a week long training at the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The group worked with the Office of Navajo Public Defender, Navajo Court System and the Dine' Policy Institute. In fall 2007, Chief Justice (Emeritus) of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, Robert Yazzie, visited the Law School and held a workshop with ALE participants and UW faculty to discuss strategies for discovery and implementation of fundamental law from a comparative perspective of the history and culture of both Afghanistan and the Native American tribes in the U.S. Justice Yazzie, in turn, invited Professor Eddy and two ALE participants to present at a later symposium at the Dine Policy Institute.

Professors Veronica Taylor, Jonathan Eddy and Clark Lombardi traveled to Jakarta in May 2007 to take part and present at the Fourth Annual Asian Law Institute (ASLI) Conference, hosted by the University of Indonesia Faculty of Law, themed "Voices of Asia for a Just and Equitable World." The three offered a comparative perspective from their recent experience with the Asian Law Center’s Afghan Legal Educators’ Program. Professor Eddy addressed “Challenges of Pluralism in Afghan Legal Reconstruction”; Professor Lombardi’s presentation was titled “Identifying, Teaching and Researching the Law of an Emerging State: Lessons from Afghanistan for other Transitional Societies.” Professor Taylor offered a perspective on “Afghan Legal Education in a Crossroad: Secular, Sharia or Synthesis?”

Following a year of English instruction in Kabul provided by the Afghan Legal Educators Program, nineteen Afghan professors arrived in Seattle in the summer of 2006 to attend the University of Washington Law School’s Summer Institute in Transnational Law and Practice and to undergo intensive advanced English training and introduction to the U.S. legal system.

In fall 2006 participants engaged in individualized courses of study which included auditing law classes, learning modern legal research techniques, including use of electronic research, and continuing English training. The group also visited legal institutions such as local, state, federal and tribal courts and correctional facilities.

In February 2006, the Afghan Legal Educators Program worked with USAID to sponsor a week-long seminar for Afghan Deans and senior faculty at the UW Law School. Participants were exposed to modern teaching techniques, discussed curriculum reform and law school administration, and visited legal clinics and other legal institutions.

For more than 20 years, political unrest and forced isolation under the Taliban regime deprived most Afghan educators of the opportunity to study outside their country. The Afghan Legal Educators Program offers opportunities to both senior and junior faculty members to travel to Seattle for additional training and to undertake research. “Rule of Law requires stable, robust legal institutions. Helping our Afghan counterparts establish viable legal education is an important project ,” observed Professor Veronica Taylor. “This is the first opportunity in decades for many of these deans to visit a law school in an industrialized country.”

Professor Jonathan (Jon) Eddy joined us in July 2005. After graduating from UW (J.D. ‘69), Jon began his career teaching commercial law in Ethiopia under Ford Foundation sponsorship and held faculty positions at a number of distinguished law schools. He has practiced commercial law for over 20 years, most recently as a partner in a major Seattle law firm. Since 2001 Jon has undertaken development work for USAID in Indonesia and the Philippines, focusing on anti-money laundering efforts, and for a U.S. Department of Commerce project on commercial law reform in the Arabian Gulf. At the Law School, Jon will teach and serve as Project Director for the Afghanistan Legal Educators project.

Professors Veronica Taylor, Jon Eddy and Clark Lombardi were awarded an initial $2 million INL grant to support the education and professional development of the personnel of Afghanistan’s universities who teach in the faculties of Shari’a (Islamic Law) and Law and Political Science.

The grant initially funded a three-year project to help rebuild and educate the next generation of Afghanistan’s legal profession, and allow Afghan lawyers to spend time in Seattle as visiting scholars or master’s of laws candidates to learn about the U.S. legal system. As 2007 drew to a close, INL extended the ALE program for an additional 3-year period. This allows additional professors to commence study towards an LL.M degree at the University of Washington School of Law.

The Asian Law Center is uniquely suited to help address the challenges the Afghan justice sector is facing by providing immediate education and training in areas such as comparative law, criminal justice, human rights as well as international studies and anthropology. The center’s extensive work in Southeast Asia – particularly Taylor and Lombardi’s work in Indonesia, has positioned it to work with Afghan lawyers, who have had limited or no exposure to how legal pluralism operates in transition and advanced economies.