Asian Law Center

Congratulations to Miles Hawks (J.D., LL.M. ’09) who will join Davis Polk & Wardwell’s Tokyo office as an Associate this year. Miles joins UW alumni Mork Murdock (J.D. ’04) and Christopher Kodama (J.D. ’06), making this three UW Law School alumni in an international office of twelve. Miles, Mork and Christopher all completed their JDs with a concentration in Asian Law and with an emphasis on professional-level Japanese language. They are great ambassadors for the Law School.

On April 22, 2009 (117 William H. Gates Hall, 12:30-1:20pm), Lawrence Repeta, Garvey Schubert Barer Visiting Professor of Asian Law, described the work of Japanese NGOs, especially the role played by the national bar association, and the significance of UN treaty monitoring in Japan.

Can Japan deliver real guarantees for the fundamental human rights proclaimed by its laws? Recent developments suggest cause for hope. In the latest round of an ongoing battle to enforce international norms in Japan, lawyers and activists presented a powerful case before the UN Human Rights Committee. Their work led to October 2008 comments from the Committee criticizing Japan’s failures to take action to remedy several longstanding human rights problems.

An alumnus of the Law School, Professor Repeta teaches at Omiya Law School, Japan, and has practiced law and conducted research in the United States and Japan since 1979. He is also the founding director of Information Clearinghouse Japan, an NGO devoted to promoting open government in Japan. The focus of his advocacy and research is transparency in government, and he is an expert on matters of privacy, security and freedom of information.

The Center congratulates Toshitaka Kudo (LL.M '02; Ph.D. '09) on the successful defense of his dissertation, 'Changes to the Civil Procedure Law and Regulations Prompted by Specialized Litigation - The U.S. and the Japanese Patent Invalidation Procedures.' His project dealt with the new and important question of how challenges to patent validity have become an important industrial strategy in both Japan and the U.S. and the pressures that this trend exerts on both the court system and administrative agencies in both countries. Dr. Kudo argues for civil procedure reforms in both the U.S. and Japan to both align the different systems and to make greater use of best practice developments in those jurisdictions. Kudo is currently a government lawyer at the Ministry of Justice in Tokyo.

The Center is actively engaged in important partnerships in Japan with lawyers and legal institutions supporting legal reform in Asia. A number of Asian Law Center Japanese alumni are now leaders in the fields of Asian law, development and legal technical assistance in Japan, including Judge Masahiro Iseki (ret) (LL.M. ‘70), Professor and attorney Toshiro Ueyanagi (LL.M. ’90) and Japan International Cooperation Agency lawyer, Yoichi Shio (LL.M. '04).

In 2008 the Center expanded key partnerships with colleagues at Kobe University and with the Center for Asian Legal Exchange at Nagoya University. Both Asian Law Center Director Veronica Taylor and Professor Jon Eddy were Visiting Professors at Kobe during 2008, teaching Law and Development and Asian Law courses--Taylor at the Faculty of Law and Eddy at Kobe’s Faculty of International Development Studies. In 2009-10, the Center hosts a reciprocal year-long research visit by Professor Yuka Kaneko from Kobe University, a rising star among Japanese scholars focused on Asia, law and development.

Veronica Taylor spent part of her 2008 sabbatical as Visiting Professor at Nagoya University’s Center for Asian Legal Exchange. This visit yielded a joint collaboration on a conference in March 2009 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to launch a Comparative Law Association in Cambodia.

Professor Veronica Taylor (LL.M. '92), Director of the Asian Law Center, was chosen as the Dan Fenno Henderson Professor in Asian Law in acknowledgment of her research and expertise in Asian Law. She will be formally installed in May 2009. Taylor, who joined the faculty in 2001, is responsible for the J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., and Visiting Scholar Programs in Asian, Comparative, and Development Law. She specializes in commercial law and society in Asia, regulation, and law reform in transition economies, and has published extensively on commercial law in Japan and Indonesia, on regulation, on law and society in Asia, and on the 21st century challenges of law and development. As Director of the Asian Law Center, she oversees teaching, research, and policy work on Afghanistan, Central Asia, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Taylor has more than 20 years of experience as a scholar and consultant participating in and managing projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and AUSAID. She has designed law reform and legal training projects focused on Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, and the United States. In addition to her teaching and research, Taylor is the director of the U.S. Department of State Afghan Legal Educators Project based at the Asian Law Center and in Afghanistan. She also directs, with UW Professor Susan Whiting, a federally funded multi-year project, “Empowering Rural Communities: Legal Aid and the Rule of Law in Rural China,” which both delivers and studies the effects of legal aid in some of China's poorest provinces.

Professor Dan Fenno Henderson, who was on the law school faculty for 29 years, established the Asian law program. Colleagues and former students, assisted by a generous gift from Professor and Mrs. Henderson to the law school, created this endowed professorship upon Henderson’s retirement in 1991. Professor Daniel Foote (University of Tokyo) was the first Dan Fenno Henderson Professor.

We congratulate Dr. Kyoko Ishida (Ph.D. '06), who was recently appointed to the faculty of Waseda University, after serving as a Research Associate at Waseda University Institute of Comparative Law. Her dissertation on 'Japanese Lawyers and Japanese Justice – Ethics and Regulations of Japanese Lawyers in a New Century' examines the ethical standards and regulation of various professionals other than attorneys (bengoshi) licensed to provide certain legal services in Japan, and the implications for access to justice in Japan. Ishida is active in several legal sociology research projects in Japan and is developing ground-breaking follow-on research in the areas of access to justice.

This public workshop, held at the University of Washington School of Law in January 2009, brought together Japan and China specialists to assess the role of international law and regulatory change in shaping the continuing economic transformation of these two Asian countries. The workshop featured case studies by Professors Saadia Pekkanen (Jackson School / ALC), Jane Winn, Dongsheng Zang and Veronica Taylor and commentary by leading international trade specialists Professor Henry Gao (Hong Kong U / NUS) and Amelia Porges (Sidley Austin, DC). The workshop was co-sponsored by the University of Washington School of Law Asian Law Center, University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies Japan Studies and China Studies Programs, University of Washington Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professorship, and The American Society of Law - International Economic Law Interest Group.

Saadia Pekkanen (Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of International Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, UW) and adjunct professor, School of Law, was promoted to full Professor in 2008. She is a recognized expert in WTO and trade regulation and global labor and health regulation and collaborates with Asian Law Center colleagues on Japanese legal and regulatory issues.

Professor Taylor has been appointed as the Chair of the Japan Foundation American Advisory Committee. The Japan Foundation, funded primarily by the Japanese government, is the leading organization worldwide supporting research and language education relating to Japan. The U.S. is unique in having an interdisciplinary American Advisory Committee of distinguished scholars that monitors Japanese Studies nationally and makes funding recommendations for institutional and individual grantees. The University of Washington is one of ten universities in the United States originally endowed with Japan Foundation funds to create pre-eminent Japanese studies programs. The Committee Chair is an appointment by the Foundation on the recommendation of the peer members of the Committee.

On November 7, 2008, Professor Colin Jones from Doshisha University Law School, Kyoto, Japan, discussed current issues involved in seeking the return of children from Japan. Japan, unlike more than 75 countries that have agreed to return children abducted to another country by one parent in violation of custody arrangements, is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Recently, Japan announced its plans to join the Convention as early as 2010. Prof. Jones examined what changes the Hague Convention might bring about.

Professor Jones graduated from UC Berkeley and received his J.D. from Duke University Law School. After working at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP and other law firms, he joined the Doshisha University Law School to teach American torts, contracts and business law.

During the 2008-09 academic year, Garvey Schubert Barer Visiting Professor Lawrence Repeta teamed with Veronica Taylor to teach Japanese Law, and offered a new course in comparative constitutional law . An alumnus of the Law School, Professor Repeta teaches at Omiya Law School, Japan, and has practiced law and conducted research in the United States and Japan since 1979. He is also the founding director of Information Clearinghouse Japan, an NGO devoted to promoting open government in Japan. The focus of his advocacy and research is transparency in government, and he is an expert on matters of privacy, security and freedom of information.

The University of Tokyo Faculty of Law hosts an annual residential Summer School for law students from the University of Tokyo and its institutional partners in China and Korea. In 2008, both Professors Toshiko Takenaka and Veronica Taylor were among a small group of prominent comparative law professors invited to speak at the Business Law Symposium preceding the Summer School and to present intensive courses at the week-long residential program, Takenaka on Intellectual Property and Taylor on International Trade.

Congratulations to Daniel H. Foote, University of Tokyo Professor of Law and former Asian Law Center Professor 1988-2000 on the publication of Law in Japan: A Turning Point (2008) as part of the UW Press Asian Law Series. The comprehensive volume, edited by Professor Foote and Asian Law Center staff, includes contributions from several UW Law School faculty and alumni. It explores major developments in Japanese law over the latter half of the twentieth century and looks ahead to the future. Modeled on the classic work Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a Changing Society (1963), edited by Arthur Taylor von Mehren, it features the work of thirty-five leading legal experts on most of the major fields of Japanese law, with special attention to the increasingly important areas of environmental law, health law, intellectual property, and insolvency. It is the only volume to take inventory of the key areas of Japanese law and their development since the 1960s, and has already become an important reference tool and starting point for research on the Japanese legal system.

Since arriving at the law school in 1964, Richard Kummert, D. Wayne and Anne Gittinger Professor of Law, has held various positions, but his first love has been teaching. He has been an integral part of the Asian Law Program (now Center) from the very beginning. His support for innovative curriculum, beginning with the first offering of Japanese/U.S. Business Corporation Law with Professor Misao Tatsuta in 1968, is a key reason for the UW Law School’s increased visibility around the word. “For a long time," said Kummert, "we were the only place in the country with programs in Marine Affairs and an Asian Law Center…They put the UW on the map.”

Although Kummert announced his retirement in 2008, he continues to teach part time and his courses remain strong favorites of both US and international students.

Japan remains at the forefront of Asian Law Center teaching and research. Professor John (Jody) Chafee and Professor Rick Guinee continue to offer their International Contracting course in response to strong student demand. This course provides practical experience in drafting and negotiating international agreements through team negotiation with counterpart teams of Japanese law students. The course takes advantage of the technologically-advanced William Gates Hall by video-conferencing with Professor Daniel Foote and law students at the University of Tokyo. Starting with Spring of 2007, Professors Guinee and Chafee have added a new course in International Mergers and Acquisitions utilizing a practicum approach. The course follows a hypothetical business transaction between a Japanese company and a U.S. company, from its earliest stages through to its closing. Here as well, the majority of class sessions are video-conferenced with a class of students at Waseda University in Japan.

Professor Toshiko Takenaka, Washington Research Foundation Simpson Professor in Technology Law and Director of the Center for Advanced Study & Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP), continues to teach annually as a Visiting Professor at Waseda University Law School in Tokyo. She also taught comparative intellectual property, competition policy and U.S. and Japan patent law at the University of Tokyo and at the Osaka Institute of Technology summer schools. Under her direction, CASRIP joined the Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property of Waseda Law School in sponsoring an international innovation policy conference in Tokyo in December 2006 and a transnational intellectual property seminar and conference held at Waseda Law School in March 2007. Professor Takenaka remains a featured speaker before groups in the United States, Italy, and Asia, including at Hokkaido University, the Institute of Innovation Research at Hitotsubashi University, Keio University, Tokyo Medical Dental University, National Yunlin University in Taiwan, Seoul National University, the Japan IP High Court, the Korean Institute of Intellectual Property and IP and patent associations in Japan and Korea.

Under her directorship, the CASRIP annual summer institute continues to draw more than 60 participants from Asia, Europe, and the United States and includes representatives from Hitachi, Bayer A.G., Toshiba, the Max Planck Institute, the courts, and patent offices in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Professor Takenaka has organized the summer institute since 1994. The institute culminates in the High Technology Protection Summit Conference, a two-day program that brings together experts from around the world to discuss cutting-edge legal issues in intellectual property law.

Rob Britt, The Gallagher Law Library Japanese Legal Materials Specialist, celebrated his 20-year anniversary at the library in July 2007. Typically (and suitably), at the time he was off representing the Library in Australia -- making presentations on Japanese legal research and doing a professional evaluation of the Japanese law collection at the University of Melbourne. In addition to performing excellent work on Japanese collection development, cataloging, reference, web work and teaching, in recent years Rob has been active in the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) and the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC).

In July 2007, the alumni meeting of the Japan Chapter of the UW Law School Alumni Association took place at Waseda University, starting with a symposium organized by Professor Takenaka and followed by a reception. The first panel of the symposium explored hot topics in Mergers & Acquisitions under Japan’s revised corporation law.The panel, moderated by Mr. Osamu Hirakawa (LL.M. ‘77) of Anderson Mōri & Tomotsune, included Mr. Keisuke Sadamori, Counselor, Cabinet Secretariat; Mr. Kunizo Suzuki (CASRIP Advisory Committee-Texas Instruments Japan; Prof. Hidetoshi Masuda (Visiting Scholar Alumni -Senshu Law School) and Mr. Jody Chafee (J.D. ’91) of Starbucks Coffee legal department and UW school of law Adjunct Professor.

In the second part of the symposium, addressing legal education for global lawyers, alumni shared from their experience at the UW LL.M. Programs. The Waseda students in attendance showed much interest in this and enjoyed getting to know the panelists, other alumni and UW friends, some incoming LL.M. students, and Mie Murazumi (J.D. ’01), LL.M and Ph.D. Programs Coordinator, in the reception that followed.

In spring of 2007, an imperial honor was awarded to alumnus Griffith Way (J.D. ’48, LL.M. ’68) in recognition of his long-standing support to increase economic and cultural development between the United States and Japan. Way, who this year celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first graduating class of LL.M. in Japanese law in 1968, received the coveted Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, from Kazuo Tanaka, Consul General of Japan in Seattle. For over 40 years, Way spent about six months each year in Asia as a practicing attorney in association with the Tokyo law firm of Blakemore & Mitsuki, and was instrumental in bringing Japan into the Washington State International Trade Fair in 1957. In 1990, with Thomas Blakemore and his wife Frances, Way helped establish the Blakemore Foundation where he continues to this day to strengthen American and Japanese ties.

In Spring 2007, Visiting Professor Lawton Hawkins joined Professor Richard Kummert to team-teach our Comparative Corporate Governance course, exploring broader issues of corporate governance with a particular focus on U.S.-Japanese Corporate Relations. Hawkins, a former Blakemore Fellow at the Inter-University Center for Advance Japanese Studies, joined us with eleven years of experience practicing law in Asia, first at the Tokyo office of Morrison & Foerster, later as head of the American Express General Counsel's Office in Japan, and finally as American Express Group Counsel for Japan/Asia/Pacific. He has previously taught U.S. and Japanese law at Keio University Law School and at Temple University in Japan. Following his teaching period at UW, Hawkins joined the Coca-Cola Corporation in Atlanta.

In winter 2007, retired Judge Masahiro Iseki (LL.M. ‘70) was awarded an imperial honor by His Imperial Majesty Emperor Akihito of Japan in recognition of their distinguished careers and public service and was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star, for his judicial work. Judge Iseki was one of the law school’s earliest LL.M. graduates from Japan. He had a distinguished career in the Japanese judiciary, culminating in his work as a presiding judge on the Osaka High Court. His expertise in law and the judicial system extends beyond Japan, and although officially retired, he continues to provide technical legal expertise to Asian nations such as Vietnam on behalf of the Japan International Development Agency. Judge Iseki also continues to teach litigation at Kansai University School of Law.

Judge Iseki has been active in the Japanese chapter of the UW Law School Alumni Association. In 2001-02 he returned to the UW as a visiting scholar to teach Japanese law and work with Professor Veronica Taylor. His visit made possible a moot court in Japanese law where students litigated an actual case on appeal to the Osaka High Court before the decision was handed down in Japan.

In Autumn 2006, Visiting Professor Andrew Pardieck taught Japanese Law. Dr. Pardieck specializes in Japanese law, and shared his knowledge and experience of Japanese trial law with UW J.D. and LL.M students. As a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hokkaido, he wrote his dissertation, in Japanese, on disclosure requirements in the Japanese and U.S. securities markets. The Commercial Law Centre, Inc. published this work in 2001. In addition to his legal practice in the United States, he has lectured widely in Japan, and has published on a variety of topics including Japan’s securities law, foreign legal consultants, and alternative dispute resolution.

Renewed energy of our Japanese alumni culminated to formalize the Japan Chapter as our first formally constituted alumni association outside the United States. Law School alumni in Japan have met regularly in the past under the leadership of Tasuku Matsuo (LL.M.’69), and in June 2006 gathered in Osaka and Tokyo to launch the Japan Chapter of the UW Law School Alumni Association. They were joined by faculty alumnae Professor Veronica Taylor (LL.M. ’92), Professor Toshiko Takenaka (LL.M. ’90, Ph.D. ’92) and Professor Jonathan Kang.

Attendees expressed a strong interest in supporting potential applicants to the law school as well as providing opportunities for them to interact with their fellow alumni when they return to Japan. The new chapter also wants to inform practitioners and legal scholars on opportunities for advanced training at the Seattle campus and develop a wide range of programs, activities, and events in Japan. As Professor Taylor observed “our international alumni form one of the law school’s most valuable assets, and our Japanese alumni are our largest group of graduates outside the United States. We are committed to partnering with our alumni colleagues in Japan to strengthen the UW profile among promising students, practitioners, and academic colleagues.”

Much of the preparatory work for the meeting was done by Professor Takenaka who serves on the Japan Alumni Association Organizing Committee with Katsuya Natori (LL.M. ’90)(chair), Takamitsu Shigetomi (LL.M.’03) Yoriko Noma (LL.M. ’92), Yuki Terazawa (LL.M. ’99), and Tomohito Ihara (CASRIP Research Fellow’96)(Secretary).

In October 2005, the Asian Law Center hosted a three day invitational workshop New Directions in Japanese Law for twenty colleagues in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe working on Japanese Law. Workshop participants presented work in progress and unpublished papers on issues ranging from commercial, criminal, and constitutional law in Japan to Japanese legal education and practice.

The workshop brought together many UWLS alums, including Professor John Haley (LL.M. ’71) and former students who followed suit in academia, such as Kyoko Ishida (LL.M. ’06, Ph.D. 2006); Leon Wolf (LL.M. ’96), Lawrence Repeta (J.D. ‘79), Mark Levin (LL.M ’90), Tay-sheng Wang (LL.M. ’90, Ph.D. ’92), Veronica Taylor (LL.M. ’92); Toshiko Takenaka (LL.M. ’90, Ph.D. ’92); and Jody Chafee (J.D. ’91).