In keeping with Hawai‘i’s location, culture and history, the School of Law has longemphasized Pacific­Asian Legal Studies (PALS). Our Pacific ­ Asian courses are moreimportant as American law practice becomes ever more globalized — and they continue toprovide a comparative perspective on the U.S. legal system, which we believe is valuable forall our students. We offer a broad selection of courses on Pacific­ Asian legal issues:permanent faculty members teach courses on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Philippine Law,as well as a variety of comparative courses on topics like labor or insolvency law.Distinguished visitors offer shorter specialty courses on Asian and Pacific law. We alsoencourage students to broaden their exposure to Asia and the Pacific through externships,language training and law study abroad, as well as through participation in area studiescenters across the University of Hawai‘i­ Mānoa campus.

William S. Richardson School of LawUniversity of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

2515 Dole StreetHonolulu, HI 96822

www.law.hawaii.edu/pals

Pacific­Asian Legal Studies

The William S. Richardson School of Law offersmore courses on Asian law than virtually any otherlaw school in the United States, and we are the onlyAmerican law school to teach Native Hawaiian andPacific Islands law. Our students may take generalAsian comparative and international law courses orchoose from specialized courses on Chinese,Japanese, Korean, or other Pacific­Asian topics.Students who have Asian­Pacific research interestsmay work with faculty members in directed studycourses, as well as write their second­year seminarpapers on Asian­Pacific topics.

Selected PALS Courses:

Comparative LawInternational Business TransactionsInternational LawAsia­Pacific Insolvency LawAsian Comparative Labor LawChinese Business LawJapanese Business LawKorean Business LawHuman Rights in AsiaLaw and Society in ChinaLaw and Society in JapanLaw and Society in KoreaLaw of the PhilippinesPacific­Island Legal SystemsAsian Comparative Environmental LawAsian Pacific Business LawForeign and International Legal ResearchIndigenous Intellectual Property RightsInternational Criminal LawInternational Economic Law and BusinessInternational Environmental LawInternational Human Rights ClinicInternational Intellectual PropertyInternational Ocean LawInternational Protection of Human RightsReadings in Chinese LawTopics in International Legal Studies

Pacific­Asican Legal Studies Certificate

To recognize students who concentrate in Pacific­Asian law, we award a certificate in Pacific­AsianLegal Studies. Students working towards thecertificate may choose to focus on business relatedtopics, for example, or they might concentrate onPacific Islands and Asian legal issues. They mayreceive credit for approved externships in Asia orthe Pacific, as well as for related courses taken inother graduate programs in the University.

Real­world Experience

We actively support the participation of students inexternships in Asia and the Pacific as part of theirlaw school program. PALS students have recentlytraveled to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India,Cambodia, Palau and the Federated States ofMicronesia, where they have worked for a widerange of organizations, including judges’ offices,law firms, international criminal tribunals, UnitedNations agencies and NGOs. Within the last fewyears, PALS students have completed externshipswith law firms in Tokyo, Taipei and Bangkok, aswell as with human rights groups in Cambodia,Dharamsala and Hong Kong. Students may do anexternship during the summer or, with approval,may spend a semester abroad in Asia or the Pacific.

Asia Law Talks

Several times each semester, the Pacific­AsianLegal Studies faculty invites guest speakers to givepresentations at the law school. These speakersinclude prominent scholars, judges, and lawyersacross a wide variety of fields related to Pacific­Asian law. Recent Asia Law Talks have featured:

­ Judge Chang­ho Chung of the Khmer RougeTribunal,"Challenges faced by Mixed Courts" October 4,2013

­ Professor Lawrence Repeta of Meiji University,

"Japan's Democracy at Risk" August 27, 2013

­ Professor Changzheng Zhou of NanjingUniversity,"The Plight of China's Migrant Workers," February4, 2013

Pacific­Asian Legal Studies Faculty

Our core PALS faculty members are actively engaged in current Asian and Pacific legal issues and bring anunusual depth of Asian­Pacific expertise to their courses. They are recognized nationally and internationallyfortheir scholarship, which they combine with extensive real­world experience. Committed to teaching as wellas to research, they remain — in our Law School’s tradition — exceptionally accessible to students.

Tae­Ung Baik

..

Associate Professor of Law,

Chair, Pacific­Asian Legal

Studies

Alison W. Conner

Professor of Law,

Director, International Programs,

LLM Faculty Adviser

Mark A. Levin

Professor of Law

Charles D. Booth. . .

Professor of Law,

Director, Institute of Asian­

Pacific Business Law

Ronald C. Brown

Professor of Law

Diane Desierto

Assistant Professor of Law

Lawrence C. Foster

Professor of Law

Carole J. Petersen

Professor & Director of the

Spark M. Matsunaga Institute

for Peace and Conflict

Resolution

Keiko Okuhara

Bibliographic Services,

Systems Librarian

Selected Recent Faculty Activities:

Professor Diane Desierto gave a lecture at the Fourth

Biennial Conference of the Asian Society of International Law

hosted by the Indian Society of International Law in New

Delhi, India on November 15, 2013.

Professor Charles Booth presented his first lecture to a group

of Mongolian judges as part of the IDLO/EBRD Commercial

Law Judicial Training Program in Mongolia on October 9,

2013.

Professor Tae­Ung Baik spoke about at the 5th Annual Asian

Constitutional Law Forum hosted by Tsinghua University

Law School in Beijing, China, on October 19–20, 2013.

Professor Ronald Brown gave a talk at the annual conference

of the European China Law Studies Association hosted by

Oxford University Law Faculty and the China­EU Law

School in Oxford on September 19­20, 2013.

Professor Mark Levin chaired the 4th Plenary Session and

was keynote speaker for a symposium on “Tobacco Industry

Interference with Government Policy” at the 10th Asia Pacific

Conference on Tobacco or Health (APACT), in Tokyo, Japan

from August 18­21, 2013.

Selected Faculty Publications:

Tae­Ung Baik,Emerging Human Rights Systems in Asia Cambridge

University Press, Dec. 2012.

Charles D. Booth, et al. Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency of

Natural Persons World Bank, April 2013.

Ronald C. Brown, Comparative Alternative Dispute Resolution for

Individual Labor Disputes in Japan, China, and the United States:

Lessons from Asia?, 86 St. John's L. Rev., 2012.

Alison W. Conner, "Training China's Lawyers: Enduring Influences

and Disconnects," in Stanley Lubman, ed., The Evolution of Law

Reform in China: An Uncertain Path, 2012.

Diane A. Desierto, ICESCR Minimum Core Obligations and

Investment: Recasting the Non­Expropriation Compensation Model

During Financial Crises, 44 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev., 2012.

Lawrence C. Foster, et al., The China Law Reader, Long River

Press, Dec. 2012.

Mark A. Levin, Circumstances That Would Prejudice Impartiality:

The Meaning of Fairness in Japanese Jurisprudence, 36 Hastings

Int'l & Comp. L. Rev., 2013.

Keiko Okuhara, et al. Issues and Trends of Collection Development

of East Asian Law in the United States, 105 Law Library Journal,

Aug. 2013.

Carole J. Petersen, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Hong

Kong: A Case for the Strategic Use of Human Rights Treaties and the

International Reporting Process, 14 Asian­Pac. L. & Pol'y J., 2013.

David Cohen

Professor of Law

David M. Forman

Director, Environmental Law

Program

Associate Faculty Specialist

PALS Student Activities

Every year our JD program attracts a remarkablytalented and diverse group of students, many ofwhom have lived and worked in Asia and havestrong research or practical interests in Asian andPacific studies. Many graduating students earnPALS certificates every year, and many morestudents enroll in PALS courses. This creates astrong community of shared interests, and ourstudents have an opportunity to work on projectswith their classmates in a host of PALS activities,including a law journal, moot court teams and otherstudent organizations.

Pacific­Asian Legal Studies Organization

Founded in 1997, the Pacific­Asian Legal StudiesOrganization (PALSO) is one of the school’s oldeststudent­led organizations. PALSO is independentlygoverned by an all­student board, elected annuallyby its members, with the advice of its co­facultyadvisors, and is self­supporting.

PALSO is committed to promoting understandingof Pacific­Asian legal systems. PALSO sponsors aseries of lectures by speakers from the local bar andacademic community as well as from Pacific Rimcountries and the U.S. mainland. The organizationalso sponsors an overseas summer study programseminar, a career seminar for law school studentsand many social activities throughout the academicyear.

To learn more about Pacific­Asian Legal Studies at the William S. Richardson School of Law,please contact us at:

University of Hawai‘i at MānoaWilliam S. Richardson School of Law

Pacific­Asian Legal Studies2515 Dole Street

Honolulu, HI 96822

www.law.hawaii.edu/pals

(808) 956­7966

Asian­Pacific Law and Policy Journal

The Asian­Pacific Law & Policy Journal(http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj) was founded in 1999as the first fully functional web­based Americanjournal dedicated to addressing legal issues in EastAsia, Polynesia and Australia. The Journal is editedand managed by students and provides a significantopportunity for them to improve their research,writing and editing skills while making acontribution to legal scholarship. Although arelatively new journal, the APLPJ has become apopular forum for discussion of important legalissues affecting the Asia­Pacific region, attracting awide readership of overseas scholars, practitionersand students. Its inaugural issue, published inFebruary 2000, featured a symposium on legaleducation reform in Japan. Other issues haveincluded articles on such diverse topics as judicialindependence in Burma, the Korean legalprofession, the constitutionality of Samoan curfewsand the enforcement of arbitral awards in China.

Institute of Asian­Pacific Business Law

Established in 2006 at the University of Hawai‘i atMānoa, William S. Richardson School of Law, theInstitute of Asian­Pacific Business Law’s (IAPBL)mission is to be the premier academic center in therapidly growing field of Pacific and Asian businesslaw focusing on issues of regional importance, byengaging scholarship and scholarly exchanges andtraining amongst the academic, legal, and businesscommunities. To this end, the Institute focuses onareas of Pacific and Asian law that directly impactthe socio­economic fabric of the region, includingcorporate and commercial law, businesstransactions, insolvency and secured transactions,securities law, real estate financing, intellectualproperty and labor law issues