Asian Law Center

Asian and Comparative Law

Since its establishment, Asian Law at UW has been recognized for excellence in teaching and scholarship on China and Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, To that North East Asian focus we have added new expertise in South Asia (Afghanistan) and South East Asia (particularly Indonesia , Thailand and Vietnam).

Building on faculty expertise in China and Hong Kong, the Center designed and delivered Empowering Rural Communities: Legal Aid and the Rule of Law in Rural China during 2006-09. This project, led by Center professors Veronica Taylor, Susan Whiting, Dongsheng Zang and Hualing Fu (U Hong Kong/Asian Law Center) delivers legal aid and information to some of China’s poorest provinces, while studying what effect the provision of legal aid for civil cases has on citizen’s understanding of law and expectations of government.

Since 2001, the Center has focused on partnering with SE Asian legal institutions to enhance their professional capacity. Center faculty members Veronica Taylor, Jon Eddy and Clark Lombardi and Affiliate Professor Mark Cammack all have extensive experience in legal education and law reform in Indonesia. Among our new Indonesian alumni we have three recent PhD graduates:

• Dr Hendrianto (PhD ’08) author of an important dissertation on the struggle to construct judicial review in the Indonesian Constitutional Court during a transition period and the factors that enabled the Court to emerge as a functioning institution.
• Dr. Tomi Suryo Utomo (Ph.D. ‘06), who currently teaches at Sanabadra University and University of Gadja Mada, works on the protection of pharmaceutical patents in Indonesia and its impact on the public health sector.
• Dr. Kurnia Toha (Ph.D. ‘07) who is Professor of Law at University of Indonesia and an expert in indigenous property rights in Indonesia.
• Our current PhD candidates from Indonesia are Melda Ariadno (‘LLM), Assistant Professor of International Law at University of Indonesia and Bivitri Susanti, a senior researcher with the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies (PSHK), Indonesia’s leading law reform NGO.