Clarke Program

in East Asian Law and Culture

Student Programs

Professor Annelise Riles, Clarke Program Director, teaches an annual core course in East Asian law and culture.

Students at Cornell Law School take courses on East Asian law in the law school and in other departments of the university, interact with world-class researchers, practitioners and activists from Asia, and participate in conferences and workshops where policies affecting the region are debated and shaped.

Opportunities for Cornell Law students to pursue East Asian study include:

CORNELL LAW SCHOOL COURSEWORK
A core course is taught each year by Annelise Riles. The course is organized around the theme of a conference so that students participate in the conference at the end of the semester.

To learn more about coursework in international and comparative law at Cornell, please review the Cornell curriculum.

Courses with Asian Law Content, Fall 2008

China’s Company and Financial Law: An Introductory and Comparative View (LAW 7152)
L. Guo
China has been a hot topic all around the world, well beyond the Olympics. This course introduces students to basic concepts and ideas of China’s company law, in particular incorporation, operation, financing and dissolution in the context of Chinese economic reform and development, as well as some related issues like agency, partnership, bankruptcy, banking and securities. Comparative legal and social analysis will be conducted whenever applicable. Tailored for this purpose, the selected modules are designed to facilitate students to grasp the core structure and function of China’s company and financial law, understand the relevant development, and explore relationships between the evolution of laws and the deepening economic reform in China, thus prepare themselves for further research on or practicing Chinese law.
International Financial Institutions(LAW 7342)
R.C. Hockett
An introduction to the practices and legal regulation of, as well as some of the opportunities and policy concerns raised by, cross-border financial intermediation. The course begins with a brief overview of the principal instruments (loans, micro-loans, investment securities, derivative securities, etc.) and institutions (banks, microlenders, investment companies, pension and insurance funds, foreign exchange and securities markets, etc.) through which suppliers and users of financial capital and risk-bearing services are brought together. From these foundations the course moves to the internationally relevant features of the domestic regulatory regimes that govern the largest and now increasingly “globalized” (i.e., internationally accessible) domestic financial institutions and markets – in particular, the US, EU and Asian (principally Japanese) examples. The course then turns to the principal gaps in and challenges faced by these domestic regimes – in particular, global competition between regulators and between institutions and markets located in distinct jurisdictions; oft-unregulated or perceivedly under-regulated “offshore” financial institutions and markets (i.e., institutions and markets in which the principal actors and instruments all are foreign to the jurisdiction in which those institutions and markets are located); and the inopportunity and underregulation still found in the so-called “emerging markets” located in erstwhile “underdeveloped” nations. The discussion of global gaps and challenges takes us to the emerging “international financial architecture” – both the processes by which that global regime is coming into being (focusing on the roles of such intergovernmental, interregulator, inter-market and private advocacy organizations as the G-10; the OECD; the IMF, World Bank and other regional development banks; the BIS, IOSCO, IASC, ICGN, etc.) and the substantive norms (both “hard” and “soft” law) that the regime is settling upon. Three touch-stone concerns that animate our study throughout the semester are (a) the dangers of systemic risk that the international financial system must address, (b) the fairness and efficiency of the distribution of financial opportunity that the system yields, and (c) the political legitimacy of the processes by which the legal contours of the global financial system are established and structured. No specific degree of expertise in financial or international law or economics is required, but prior coursework or experience in one or more of these fields on the part of students will of course enhance classroom discussion.
Comparative Law: The Civil Law Tradition (LAW 6161)
M. Lasser
This course introduces students to the institutional and conceptual organization of “civil law” legal systems (which govern almost all of Western and Eastern Europe and Latin America, as well as significant portions of Africa and Asia). The course will therefore provide a broad overview of “civilian” private law and procedure, criminal procedure, administrative law, and constitutional law. The course is particularly interested in the differences between common law and civil law understandings of the relationship between law-making, legal interpretation, and the judiciary.

Courses with Asian Law Content, Spring 2008

Chinese Legal Systems (LAW 6151)
Cui Zhiyuan
This course will examine the law and practice in contemporary PRC. After a brief overview of Chinese legal history and legal development, the course will proceed into specific sections devoted to the overall legal reform, the status and reform of legal actors (in particular courts, prosecutors, and lawyers), and various aspects of commitment and compliance with international human rights standards. A section will also be dealing with Chinese law in a comparative perspective how it is and has been viewed in China and outside. Much of the course material will consist of academic articles as well as various reports by, for example, the United Nations. Chinese case law, statutes, and other documents will also be examined. The course will end with a discussion on possible scenarios on the future of legal development in China.
Law and Economics Meets Radical Imagination: The Case of Transitional Legal Systems (LAW 7402)
Cui Zhiyuan
Transitional legal systems—in the post-socialist as well as the developing countries—pose many challenging questions regarding the causes of institutional change. Do institutions change because of functional necessity—such as reducing "transaction cost"? For example, can some forms of corruption in the privatization process in Russia and China be justified by Judge Calabresi's distinction between property rule and liability rule? Some "law and economics" scholars in China endorse corruption on the basis of "liability rule", since obeying the current regulation has a too high "transaction cost" and the most of the current regulations would have to be eliminated anyway. To confront this kind of functionalist thinking about institutional change, this course will use Cornelius Castoriadis' book "The Imaginary Institution of Society" (MIT Press, 1987) as a main text. Castoriadis was a Greek-French thinker of the second half of the twenty-century and he developed an interesting theory of institutional change based on radical imagination. The course will discuss the controversies in the labor, property, and constitutional
laws in the transitional legal systems and let the insights from law and economics meeting with the insights from Castoriadis.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY COURSEWORK
Numerous courses on topics of relevance to East Asian law are offered across the university.

Students should consult the Registrar's Office Site to learn more about law school credit and coursework outside the lawschool.

LANGUAGE STUDY
Students with a serious interest in a legal career involving Asia are strongly encouraged to become proficient in an Asian language.

The Department of Asian Studies' FALCON (Full-year Asian Language Concentration) Program enables beginning students of Chinese and Japanese to study in a concentrated and uninterrupted manner over a period of time long enough to gain working proficiency. The Department also offers Korean and a host of other languages.

Students should consult the Registrar's Office Site to learn more about law school credit and language study.

STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMS

Programs in English
Cornell Law School has established regular exchange programs with both Peking University Law School, in Beijing, China, and The University of Hong Kong. Both receive Cornell Law students regardless of their Chinese language skill in programs that allow students to acquire a full semester of credit toward their JD degree. Both schools also send students to study at Cornell. For more information, visit Study Abroad Home.

Programs in Japanese
Waseda Graduate School of Law and Keio University Law School, both in Tokyo, Japan, have established exchange programs for Cornell law students with at least basic Japanese language skills. Cornell students studying at Waseda or Keio attend regular classes and receive a full semester of credit toward their JD degree, and Cornell Law School in turn receives exchange students from Waseda and Keio. For more information, visit Study Abroad Home.

SUMMER LAW INSTITUTE IN SUZHOU, CHINA
Cornell Law School, in partnership with Kenneth Wang School of Law, Soochow University (Suzhou, China) and Bucerius Law School (Hamburg, Germany), organizes an annual ABA-approved course in Suzhou, China. For more information, visit the Summer Law Institute's website.

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THE CLARKE STUDENT ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION

Tim Webster, 2005 winner of the Clarke Essay Prize, delivers his prize-winning paper.

Every year, the Clarke Program recognizes scholarly work by a Cornell law student or graduate student that expands the understanding of legal institutions, ideas, or practices in East Asia. The winner receives a cash award of $300 and will be invited to present his or her paper in the Program workshop in the following semester.

We welcome submissions of papers authored by Cornell J.D. students in their second or third years, Cornell L.L.M. students, or graduate students from other departments or schools within the university by May 30. Papers may be submitted by students or by their advisors on their behalf. Papers should be no more than 10,000 words in length. Please submit entries to asianlaw@cornell.edu.

JSD PROGRAM
The Clarke Program offers a vibrant interdisciplinary environment for researchers pursuing an JSD with a focus on East Asian Law and Culture. Further information about Cornell's JSD program is available here. Applicants interested in pursuing a JSD with a focus on East Asia can also contact the program directly at asianlaw@cornell.edu for further information.